The Assassin Decreed
by en extase
Summary: Three tenets define the Assassin's Creed. 1. Stay your blade from the flesh of the innocent. 2. Do not draw attention to yourself. 3. Never compromise the Brotherhood. Unfortunately, Harry's a rule-breaker. DISCONTINUED.
1. Chapter 1

**Assassin's Creed**

_**Chapter One:** _These Dark Times

That the homely house of Privet Drive Number Four was the residence of the Chosen One of the Wizarding World of Britain was known only to a circle with an extremely short radius.

Harry Potter, the aforementioned Chosen One, knew that his well-being was dependent on that tightly-controlled knowledge. The fame that defying the Dark Lord since birth brought required obscurity to balance it.

At least, it ensured his well-being in the sense that he was not under constant threat of hordes of Death Eaters and a bloodthirsty Dark Lord falling upon him.

The blood wards protecting him though, however effective they were at keeping Dark Wizards away, were powerless to alter the conditions under which Harry lived in the Dursley residence.

They were not the most pleasant of people.

They were a typical family in that they frequently squabbled over inconsequential matters, but were unified in their hatred of him, the anomaly in an otherwise completely normal household.

Anomaly didn't begin to cover it.

He wasn't normal, but that was more or less common knowledge. Ignoring the implications of the word "anomaly" on the most basic level, he was a wizard, extraordinary even among his own kind. His personage would be immortalized, his feats lionized, by historians. When the controversy raised by his detractors passed, they would take apart his life piecemeal, and place him amongst the legends regardless.

Harry couldn't help but wonder little they knew him.

They read of the Harry Potter that had slain an ancient Basilisk in the bowels of Hogwarts, the very same monster that had slumbered under the very feet of every Hogwarts alumnus.

They witnessed the boy that had emerged victorious in the renowned Tri-Wizard Tournament, his victory marred by the tragedy of the death of a fellow champion.

They created the hell that had consumed him thereafter, until he was vindicated. In the blink of an eye, their willful ignorance and cruelty turned to sympathy for the boy that had been slandered tirelessly by a Ministry and his introduction to the rigors of the harsh world, and rejoiced for him when he was proven right.

They never knew him. Not for the quickest of heartbeats, and truthfully, Harry intended to keep it that way. The thought that such treacherous base creatures might know him disgusted him.

There were the few precious to Harry that knew what deeds he had performed in his seemingly uneventful third year. They knew how he drove away hundreds of Dementors, how he rescued his wrongfully convicted godfather in direct defiance against the Ministry, and his release of the man responsible for his parents' murders out of compassion and pity.

They were closer.

In the end, there were only two people, in the entire world that truly knew him, his ambitions, his desires, his yearning for freedom.

The first was Tom Riddle, Voldemort, the great Dark Lord of his time.

The other was he himself, the only wizard alive capable of killing Voldemort.

Harry honestly had trouble distinguishing the difference between the two.

The summer had rapidly degenerated into a hellish existence. The Dursleys were not as stringent nor were they as asinine as usual, assigning him a few chores around the house, confining him to his room. They were not the issue.

The question was why Voldemort had changed his policy so drastically. Dumbledore, in the waning days of the school year, had invested nearly every free hour in training Harry in Occlumency in the wake of the Department of Mysteries incident. While the deficit of learning under Snape had been too great to recover from in only a few short weeks, Harry had achieved a certain measure of proficiency in the Mind Arts.

The blood wards blunted the mental attacks that Voldemort launched over the connection they shared, reducing the strength to such a level that Harry, with his rudimentary Occlumency shields, could withstand them.

He had initially been ecstatic at his success. However, the Legilimency attacks only increased in frequency, never weakening in contrast to his own defenses, gradually wearing under the pressure.

When Dumbledore had supplied him with a manuscript that the great Headmaster himself had written, Harry only laughed derisively as he dismissed the courier owl, and the book lay forgotten under the loose floorboard in his room.

Voldemort, in the relentless siege of his mind, gradually weakened the boundaries between their minds, and slowly their minds began to mesh.

Harry's behavior grew increasingly erratic, and he desperately tried to stop it - his weariness, everything - in a final bid for control. His weary body turned as he slept, awaiting the results of the day's labor.

It was only with a supreme effort and assertion of will that drove Harry to throw the stakes in a final bid to end the torture. Tirelessly, he had organized the defense of his mind, and had sunk into a hitherto dreamless sleep. Whether it would remain so was dependent on how well he fared against Voldemort.

The Dark Lord's creativity was astounding. With every scenario that Harry staged, Voldemort developed a completely different avatara to represent his Legilimency probe, demonstrating his expansive knowledge of both the magical and mundane worlds.

Knowledge was power. Harry feared that he would never stop learning that lesson.

* * *

It began as a lone, powerfully imbued hydraulic charge lanced the cold abyss of the Spiritus Mundi, the collective consciousness of humanity and all of the masters of the Mind Arts, hurtling towards the oblate spheroid that embodied everything that Harry was, ignoring the handful of other structures that represented the minds of other, distant Occlumens. The spheroid was covered in plated shields, with innumerable glowing gaps that served as portals into Harry's essence.

The charge slammed against the stalwart shield ineffectively. The area of impact glimmered slightly, but returned to its normal, indeterminate shade.

Then, a hundred others, all identical to the first, were unleashed, all at once, perforating the stillness that dominated the territory of the Spiritus Mundi.

Harry's Occlumency shifted to its secondary defense stage as it recognized the preconditionals. The sphere began revolving as the lances of Legilimencial power converged upon it. The assault sent vibrations rattling through the fathomless depths, the backlash gradually decreasing like a ripple disturbing a pond, until the other Occlumens' structures were only barely touched.

It was inevitable that the attack would breach the gaps, even as the charges broke upon the curvature of his shield. Most were dummies, containing useless memories. Harry had deliberately stored the memories of his childhood with the Dursleys in them, and would be ecstatic that they would be forgotten. He cloaked his valuable memories with those that he despised, burying them underneath the chaff that would absorb the brunt of the Dark Lord's attack.

There were others though – parts of his personality infinitely more significant than the memory that could empower the most dazzling Patronus Charm. Memories were of a different nature, and thus could not be stored in the same gap or cell as personality. His mental being was left exposed, with no fodder to lighten the assault.

That loss was much worse to bear.

The helix strands of the probes and their objectives unzipped, floating across the mindscape and wrapping around each other, exchanging traits and knowledge between the interlocked minds. Alone, they were inconsequential – the dislike of vodka, the first syllable of a curse that could conjure a wall of fire – but together, it made Harry more of Tom Riddle.

They made him less human. The most minute components of his personality were overwritten, altering its entirety slightly.

Flashes of disjointed scenes in Tom Riddle's life passed through his mind. One moment a young boy would stalk down a corridor, ignoring other jeering children, and another the boy was a tall teenager stalking down a torch-lit corridor at Hogwarts. Most recently showed Voldemort extracting memories and storing them in a Pensieve. Harry's mind, rendered more analytical by the newest transfusion of his enemy's mind, deduced that Voldemort was undoing whatever changes that Harry had wrought in turn to the Dark Lord's psyche, and Harry slid ever so slightly deeper in that downward spiral of despair.

The fibers of his mind, both the decreasing percentage of Harry Potter and increasing Tom Riddle, recoiled from the thought of entreating Dumbledore to aid him, when Dumbledore had neglected him so, and proven his fallibility by his revealing of the prophecy.

There was little left to do but to rebuild his shattered defenses, and hope that the next night he would prevail, and retain that part of himself that made him Harry Potter.

He only uttered a keening wail, a mournful lament of his fate, before it died in his throat.

He slept on.

Unfortunately, that keening cry had awoken the Dursleys.

He would sleep no longer.

The part of his mind born of Tom Riddle was the first to awake when he was jostled by the huge hands of Vernon Dursley. Riddle was a man of instinct, and expertly transferred the wand from under the pillow into the sleeve of his shirt. Docilely, he allowed himself to be dragged out of the bed as Vernon marched him out of the room. There was only cold yet smoldering anger, and the discipline that reined it in.

Harry awoke as his cold feet touched the floor. Only a dawning horror emerged from the dazed portion of his mind that he could truly call his own, and the helplessness of knowing what would soon happen.

_Oh Merlin don't let this happen!_ He silently pleaded, frozen in terror as he attempted to clear his sluggish mind._ Not tonight! Not tonight… _

The wand was pressed against his side in order to prevent it from slipping. He was roughly settled on the couch in the living room. He looked up coldly at his Vernon, who stood in front of him with his arms folded.

"Good evening," he drawled.

He noticed that Petunia and Dudley stood behind Vernon. Dudley still wore a leather jacket that he usually wore in his nightly outings, and Harry could smell the fetid, alcoholic breath.

He turned his gaze back to Vernon as the man began speaking.

"We're done."

Harry showed no sign of having heard him. He didn't flinch when Vernon gripped him by the shoulder and shook him, knuckles white from the self-restraint he was exerting.

"Did you hear me, boy? We're _done _with you and your kind!" he snarled. "We're tired of waking up every night because you're having a ruddy nightmare! And those freaks, thinking that they can threaten us when we've done nothing."

He paused to catch his breath, trembling with indignity, and glared at him.

"We're done."

Harry folded his hands calmly in his lap, and bowed his head, mind embroiled in system chaos. It was terrifying, his thoughts were scattered, but all of them were bent on violence.

His head shot up, and Vernon caught a glimpse of red eyes as Harry gracefully rose, procuring his wand from his sleeve. The boy's stance was aggressive, menacing, and all courage failed Vernon as he stared down the end of the wand.

"I could say the same, uncle," Harry spoke levelly.

* * *

It was fortunate that the bedroom was adjoined to the Headmaster's office, for its close proximity allowed Dumbledore to awake precisely at the moment when Fawkes screeched, jarring him awake.

He was on his feet in an instant, mind alert as he dressed, and barreled into his office, wand flying into his hand as the sheets arranged themselves with nary a conscious thought.

He slowed down as he cautiously entered the dark room. Nothing was out of place. He stared about the expansive chamber in consternation. The papers strewn across his desk hadn't moved, nor anything else. He could sense that the integrity of the wards protecting his suite hadn't been compromised, so no intruder had broken in.

Fawkes trilled, drawing his attention. The noble phoenix had abandoned its stand, and instead was perched atop the glass cabinet. His gaze drifted downwards to the instrument quaking every so slightly inside.

"Oh Harry," Dumbledore murmured softly.

He adjusted his spectacles, uneasy as dread that had overshadowed his life weeks prior reasserted itself.

"Come, friend. We shall see what trouble Mr. Potter has got himself into this time."

Fawkes trilled again as he took off, and landed on Dumbledore's outstretched arm. Warmth that flooded him lifted the weight of the world from his weary shoulders as flash-fire brightened the office for a moment. It inspired him, gave him hope that Harry was yet safe.

Hope. It was a magical thing, yet so fragile...

* * *

An aura of melancholy permeated the Dursley residence.

Dumbledore rang the doorbell and waited. When no footsteps, no sputtering characteristic of Vernon Dursley was forthcoming, he quietly undid the locking mechanism and invited himself inside, shutting the door behind him.

Warily, he walked through the entrance hall.

It was when he entered the living room when he realized how bad the situation was. Three corpses were sprawled on the carpet. The faces of the Dursleys were peaceful in death.

Harry was seated on the couch, and grimaced when he saw the headmaster.

"I would think this..." he searched for the right word, "self-_explanatory." _

Dumbledore exhaled heavily. "It was their fault, not yours. And mine. I should have taken harsher steps in ensuring their compliance."

"Oh I agree with you there," Harry chuckled mirthlessly.

They fell into an uneasy silence. Harry stared at the fallen bodies of his last relatives, furious with his inability to suppress the darker side of his nature. It was symbolic of how much ground he had given to Voldemort. Dumbledore was thinking the very same.

"There will be repercussions," he chastised carefully.

Harry flinched. He had been given what he had needed. He had an invaluable manuscript written by the legendary Dumbledore himself on Occlumency. He no longer had the excuse of learning under an incompetent teacher like Snape.

He had cast the Killing Curse.

Three times.

Expulsion from Hogwarts was now utterly unavoidable. Even if he pleaded innocence, blaming his loss of control on Voldemort's possession, his place in Hogwarts would not be assured. It could even be incriminating - the Ministry was corrupt or at the very least, open to corruption. Death Eaters could twist the nature of the information against him, and he'd wind up in a stint in Azkaban anyway. Harry felt his stomach clench sickeningly. His body trembled with the revelation, and suddenly he was grateful that Dumbledore knew how desperately he did not want to be berated. There would be far worse later, when the backlash caught up to him. He knew though, that if they did sentence him to Azkaban, the Killing Curse that had stolen Dudley's life wouldn't be the last to have left his wand.

Fawkes squawked in alarm, interrupting anything that might have been said.

"Petunia, the blood magic-" he leapt to his feet in a panic.

"The blood magic is gone," Dumbledore murmured, coming to the revelation only a moment behind.

Immediately, the headmaster procured a Christmas stocking from within his robes. "Oddment!" he said commandingly, placing his hand on Harry's shoulder.

Nothing happened. Dumbledore tightened his grip worrisomely. "Anti-Portkey and Anti-Apparition wards. Their range covers the entire neighborhood."

Ingenious. Voldemort had foreseen the consequences of the Dursleys' attempt to cow Harry, and had engineered the blood magic's failure, and had drawn Dumbledore out, ensnaring them both. Two of his chief opponents were his to take in one fell swoop. The resistance of the Light would be short-lived indeed if they did not take action swiftly.

Harry gave a hollow laugh. "The energy required to sustain those wards can only be provided by a company of wizards. We must be surrounded by every wizard and witch with the mark. The Order-"

Dumbledore grimaced, even as he idly wondered how his sheltered charge had come about that information. "Unfortunately, it is Mr. Fletcher's shift."

Harry _glared_. By the force of it alone Dumbledore cursed himself for entrusting his most important asset to the thief.

"We're fucked."

Dumbledore closed his eyes briefly before reopening them.

"It is your safety that is imperative. You must get your Firebolt-"

"It won't be maneuverable enough with both of us riding it," Harry said. "If they get you but not me, it will be as great as a victory they need. The Death Eaters may have airborne riders that can easily overtake an encumbered broomstick. If we attempt to leave separately, we will be overcome all the more easily."

He paused, steeling himself. "My fate will be the same as yours."

Throat constricting, Dumbledore drew his wand grimly.

"You are right," he consented. "It is imperative that both of us escape alive. In the case that one of us falls, then Fawkes will take the other to safety. We must make our escape on foot."

Before they reached the front door however, the wall separating the garden from the living room blew apart into innumerable fragments. Black specters donning jeering white masks surged into the breached house as the two besieged wizards leapt away from them, and the fight was on.


	2. Chapter 2

So… how's life?

Firstly, I would like to extend my thanks to everyone that deigned to review. This story is in its infancy, and yet Assassin's Creed has outstripped everything else I've put out in popularity. I'm not quite sure how to feel, lol.

Oh, and Assassin's Creed is out. :P

* * *

**_Chapter Two_**: Critical Mass

* * *

The difference between a teenager with five years' worth of study and a warlock armed with a century's became immediately apparent. 

"_Stupefy!"_

"_Furacis Fortitudo!"_

As they had not been graced with time to prepare themselves or agree on a strategy, Harry did what he did both best and worst - react on instinct.

They held the advantage, fleeting though it was. The Death Eaters came in two lines, not bothering to stagger their formation. If their spells missed those up front, they still had the potential to hit those behind. They launched their spells at the center of the approaching mass, stacking them atop one another. At best, they would remove two from the fight before it even started, and throw the others into disarray. At worst, the Death Eaters were more experienced than their poor formation suggested, and they would squander their window of opportunity.

Neither happened, but Harry was more than willing to settle for what did occur, considering the dire circumstances.

Harry's Stunner was neatly sidestepped, and flew on towards the Death Eater that was left exposed. The man acted quickly, ambient ruby motes splashing against the sturdy dome of his shield. The ability to endure a Stunner did not say much, but its inability to withstand the much more powerful charm that immediately followed spoke volumes.

The iron gray bolt hurtled towards the dome protecting its caster, magic along its willowy periphery bleeding off, collecting into a faint cloud not unlike vapor that trailed behind.

To the unfortunate Death Eater's credit, the strength of his shield, even after being weakened by Harry's adrenaline-fueled Stunner, sufficed to cancel out Dumbledore's charm. Both shield and metaphorical sword faded into inexistence.

Unfortunately, the cloud that had curiously formed soon followed, enveloping the defenseless Death Eater. The haze seemed to float immobile, before being sucked into the Death Eater as if by a void. What appeared to be hoarfrost formulated on the Death Eater's robe, coating it in an icy layer. The black shape took a stutter-step backwards, before bonelessly tumbling to the ground.

Another Death Eater attempted to revive his fallen comrade, but the incapacitated man was unresponsive. The others surged forward, striding past them as Harry and Dumbledore backpedaled. Dumbledore, sensing an opportunity, issued forth a stream of low-level hexes at the reviver. It was obvious it was a token attempt at removing a distracted enemy. It might have succeeded, were it not for another Death Eater covering for him. He was obviously a well-seasoned duelist, batting the opportunistic spells away with the appropriate counter-hexes. Unfortunately for _that _Death Eater, that was where their cohesion ended.

"_Insculpto!"_ Harry bit out.

It was much like the first exchange. Harry softened a target, and Dumbledore finished the Death Eater off. Only now, their roles were reversed.

It was a reversal he _relished_.

He strafed to the right as he wove his spell, the movement granting him an optimal angle for assault. He let loose with three Death Eaters in the trajectory of his surge of amber light. Two of them that were nearest to him leapt aside, flinging back curses into Harry's face.

Their curses refused to bite as his shield exploded from the end of his wand, flaring as it battled them back. Harry looked past the pulsing layer of protective magic, the web of multi-colored strands of magic that now crisscrossed the living room, tracking the movement of his spell with a kind of dread.

The Death Eater that foiled Dumbledore's outburst of spells did not see it coming, preoccupied with deflecting the last of Dumbledore's hexes away.

He noticed too late, and his half-formed shield shattered upon impact. The Death Eater's torso was torn open, invisible barbed hooks snaring under his skin before being ripped out. Blood sprayed over the masked faces of his horrified companions. The Death Eater didn't need to worry about the signature engraved into him, but Harry was inordinately pleased seeing his initials _H.J.P. _weeping the blood of a slain enemy.

It was art.

That complex web of spellfire faded into nothingness as the combatants stared at him in shock, before it renewed in full force by their anger and knowledge that they faced someone willing to kill.

The Death Eaters seethed behind their blood-stained masks, hurling spells endlessly at the beleaguered duo. Harry and Dumbledore fought back with fervor, but there was only so much one could do when outnumbered seven to one. The Death Eaters spread out, flanking them as they took places in the kitchen, forcing them into the hallway.

"_Protego! Templis ignes inferre, Gomet– _PROTEGO!_"_ Harry roared, casting as many spells as he could in the very momentary lull.

He collapsed his shield to make a quick retaliatory strike, launching off an arrowhead of crackling fire. The magical projectile soared through the air, leaving a phantom trail of flame in its wake. Its target ducked under it, and it instead barreled through the kitchen window. The nearest Death Eater shrieked as molten fragments imbedded themselves into his clothed back. Harry attempted to deal a crippling blow, but was forced back onto the defensive by another set of curses from three different directions. His shield, sustained by the full reservoir of his power, again flashed to life, the strain of the abuse beginning to tell as its vibrant luminosity began to dim.

He was a bundle of energy, but that energy was getting closer and closer to depletion. It was ridiculous – he had not yet even undergone his magical maturation, and here he was struggling to hold his own against five adult Death Eaters. They were not of the pedigree that had accompanied Voldemort to the Department of Mysteries, but when they took turns at battering at his shields, giving Harry very narrow windows for counterattack, it didn't matter.

Dumbledore was harried by no less than nine Death Eaters, who devoted themselves to keeping him occupied, preventing him from coming to Harry's aid.

_Hopeless,_Harry thought bitterly as his Bone-Breaker was swatted out of the air moments after it had left his wand. If either of the two defenders fell, then the one that remained standing would fall under all fourteen wands. No one was that powerful. In his prime, Dumbledore might have been, but now he was old. Harry was at the opposite end of the age spectrum.

_Bloody old goat, couldn't you have aged more gracefully? _Harry thought half-heartedly.

"_Reducto!" _he shouted with renewed determination. "_Repellum!"_

The Death Eaters reared back as his Reductor Curse blew apart the fireplace. It had not been running that night, but the friction of his curse was more than enough to ignite the coals, sending them scattering along with detritus.

His Banisher hit a tong, flung end over end into the air by the impact. Harry whooped internally in victory as he sent it through the Death Eater's wand arm, causing the stricken wizard to drop his wand. His heart subsequently fell when the Death Eater, with iron discipline, caught it with his other hand.

"_Deletrius," _the Death Eater uttered hoarsely, shakily tapping the tong with his wand. "_Curage."_

With two spells, he was as good as new.

Desperation clawed at Harry. He glanced to the side, and caught Dumbledore's eye.

Dumbledore winked.

Harry watched as the headmaster whirled around, wand jabbing into an incoming beam of violet light.

Unexpectedly, a shield blinked out as the powerful curse was redirected into the Death Eater's shield, collapsing it into tiny shards.

All but baying for blood, Harry reeled off the first spell that came to mind.

"_Debellum."_

The Death Eater didn't fall, but that made the effects of the curse all the more pronounced. The man's fist shook, refusing to release the wand, even though he had passed into unconsciousness, body contorting horrifically as burning nerves went haywire.

Harry's eyes widened with a terror inspired by one thing -

He had never learned that spell.

And in that instant, he knew that his instincts were no longer his own, but belonged to an amalgam of Harry Potter and Tom Riddle.

"_Formidilosus!"_ Dumbledore said sharply. Whether the sharpness of his tone was due to Harry's not-so-Light choice of spell, or to his own intense concentration, couldn't be deciphered.

Harry was not unfamiliar to magical combat. In his experience, efficiency was what duelists strived for – it was what _he _strived for. Aurors and Death Eaters balanced speed and clarity. They wanted to send off spells as quickly as possible, but not at such a speed that they couldn't articulate the incantation. Wand movements were quick and concise, enough to maintain the structure of the spell but insufficient in preventing some magic from bleeding off.

It was not so with Dumbledore.

His voice boomed with power that stunned all. It could have taken a second, or five. There was no marker. In that moment, there were not other spells flying by which their movement could be used to judge his speed.

Perhaps it was Dumbledore's personal style, or it was the grace required by the spell.

He swept his wand across the air in front of him, its tip spewing forth a bronze-colored arc painfully bright in its intensity. The wand, itself only eleven years younger than its wielder, would have trembled were it not for the firmness of Dumbledore's grip.

It appeared as if he was painting that crescent with a masterstroke, the bronze-colored matter leaving his wand to stay at its assigned place in the air.

Then, he twirled his wand expertly, and plunged it into the crescent, sending it rocketing outwards.

None of the Death Eaters were foolish enough to think that any shield they could conjure could hold against the visibly destructive wave of magic. They flattened themselves to the ground as it flew overhead.

One Death Eater was all it took. The bronze dervish's nature was made clear when it crashed into his shoulder.

The golden matter broke free of its invisible constraints, blowing Harry off his feet. Sharp pain racked his cranium, more excruciating than any of Voldemort's merry incursions into his mind. He clutched his head, vision swimming as the polished floor trembled beneath his limp body.

When the pain faded, Harry climbed to his feet, and surveyed his ruined living room dispassionately.

Perhaps the portion of his brain that controlled concern was still recovering, but Harry felt _nothing _as he saw the ragged pieces of cloth and nightgowns that had all once been worn by humans.

Dumbledore swept his fallen hat off the floor, and carefully set it upon his head, turning away from the scene of carnage. Harry fell into step behind him as they strode towards the door, both hobbling slightly in dizziness. Dumbledore hid his weariness better, though, eyes blazing with fire that refused to be quenched.

Harry was conscious of how short their respite might last.

"What was the first spell you used? Furasis Fortitude-o?"

Dumbledore glanced at him, mildly surprised. "The Harry that had left Hogwarts at the beginning of summer would have asked about the one I had cast last."

Harry shrugged.

"The last one was simply overpowered. I won't have the power to cast it for years to come, but the first one – it's unlike anything I've learned."

"It is not overpowered. It is a spell from a more elegant age," Dumbledore corrected. "But to answer your question, it is the charm belonging to a spell set designated Tactical Magicka. It is my own addition to the set, and is an extension to the Casadesus Theory, which states that an ideal spell only releases its magical payload once it strikes the target. It is called ideal because no spells follow that guideline, for it would take an ideal wizard to cast it. Every spell bleeds a portion of its energy into the atmosphere, unless it impacts at literally point-blank range. The mechanics of my spell directs the lost magic to follow behind it. Quite useful."

"Ah. I'll have to read up on that."

"It is in the Restricted Section. I will grant you access to it once the school year begins. As for now, we must leave."

"Why can't Fawkes take one of us back to Hogwarts, and return for the other?" Harry questioned as they stepped onto the driveway.

"The Dark Mark," Dumbledore said, gesturing towards the emerald sign that dominated the sky above the Dursley household with something akin to disdain, "It is a variant of the Curse mark. Its earliest form has been in usage since well before Voldemort's time. The specimen we see above your house, like its forerunner, is tied to the caster's magical core.

"A phoenix's power is diminished in its presence so that its flash-fire transportation is limited to operating within it. If the phoenix was already in its area of influence before it was created, then it can leave, but is obstructed from reentering. Thus, Fawkes could not return for the other. Once the caster leaves, it will fade naturally, but I am certain it was cast either by Voldemort himself, whom I sincerely hope we do not come across, or a concealed Death Eater whom we have little chance of finding at all.

It is not the time for the former to leave this world, and if it is the latter, we will have to forge through the bulk of Voldemort's forces in order to reach him or her, which, of course, defeats the point of our escape."

Harry wasn't completely convinced. "Phoenixes are supposed to be _the _Light creatures, aren't they? It's hard to believe that they would be hindered by even a Curse Mark."

Dumbledore dipped his head in agreement.

"As I said before, Curse Marks are tied to the caster's magical core. It's power is directly proportional to the strength of the caster. In this case, I suspect that a member of the Inner Circle, or Voldemort himself has raised the mark. I cannot risk trying to determine this - the repellant relationship encourages the phoenix to leave, but obviously it presents a problem in that Fawkes can only find out when he tries to return."

Harry recognized the game Voldemort so masterfully played just as well as Dumbledore did, but he felt helpless nonetheless. They were trapped by their own minds and capacity for reason. The only way to test the Dark Mark's strength would be through the use of Fawkes, but if Dumbledore's suspicions were indeed correct, Fawkes would then be cut off from them. Conversely, the mark might have been conjured by a weakling, but they could not make assumptions.

"I see. Why don't we see more Dark Marks around?" Harry asked, digesting the information.

"It is not common knowledge, and no Dark Arts book documents it. I suspect only Voldemort and a select few know. They restrict the knowledge because if a common Death Eater was to be captured and divulge it, the Unspeakables, who receive transcripts of their interrogations, would inevitably begin working on a Light counterpart of the Dark Mark. There are Dark creatures with similar abilities to the phoenix that have been gaining popularity in recent times."

"But then, why hasn't the Dark Mark seen more widespread use? Unless..."

Dumbledore peered at his protégé over the rim of his spectacles.

"The Unspeakables have other sources than captured Death Eaters for these little tidbits."

Harry halted at the sight of six unsuspecting Death Eaters milling about at the end of the street.

"We can take them," he whispered to Dumbledore as the older wizard ushered him behind the hedge.

Dumbledore polished his spectacles, carefully wiping the lenses with his sleeve, and peered at the group through the foliage suspiciously.

"Yes," he muttered to himself. "Right."

"Sir?"

"Yes," Dumbledore repeated, louder and with more confidence this time. "We should be able to handle them without too much trouble. Come. I will lead. You will follow."

Dumbledore rose, leaping spryly over the hedge, Harry on his heels.

Neither was wasteful with their reserves, and didn't take the bait when the Death Eaters opened fire. Cars, satellites for cable television, children's bicycles, anything not fixed to the ground short of the houses on the street themselves rose from their places. Dumbledore brandished his wand like a conductor's baton, sending the objects darting to intercept curses that flew their way.

Disintegration Curses caused them to merely fade into nothingness, more destructive spells caused them to explode violently. The number of objects at Dumbledore's disposal gradually decreased, but so did the distance between them and the Death Eaters.

Finally, they reached them, and with an outburst of magic Dumbledore unleashed a billowing shockwave through the collection of machines hovering in front of them, and propelled them forward.

The Death Eaters, surprised, scrambled back, throwing spells wildly, destroying as many of the hardware turned projectiles as possible.

They dove out of the way as a BMW ploughed through much of the street's layer of granite, landing on its canopy and collapsing upon itself.

"_Incendio!" _Harry incanted, shooting off a bright flare at the exposed chassis of the upturned vehicle.

Both wizards recoiled from the bright explosion that engulfed the Death Eaters. When the flare blinding their vision faded, a blackened burn scarred the street.

They made their way past the burning wreckage. Dumbledore paused and stilled for a moment.

Dumbledore whirled around, bellowing "_Contegorum!", _swiping his wand upwards.

The Light Shield flashed vibrantly as a Curse smashed against it with the force of a freight train. It held, deflecting the cyan-colored stream into a lamp post, shattering the source of light, but Dumbledore was driven back several feet.

"_Templis ignes inferre! _Not more of them!" Harry protested, launching a fireball at the Death Eaters that Apparated at the opposite end of the street. It splashed over the closest of the Dark wizards before he could reorient himself, immolating the man too quickly for his companions to extinguish him. "_Debellum!"_ His next spell was less successful, flying harmlessly through the gap the Death Eaters created as they moved aside.

These were the veterans, Harry instinctively knew. One among them had nearly slipped a curse past Dumbledore's guard and so knew how to cast magic non-verbally.

They backed away, but another series of crackles rent the night air, and another company of Death Eaters rounded the bend, amassing at the junction of the street and the road.

Harry hissed in frustration, instinctively sending off a volley of hexes, hoping to catch them while they recovered. The distance was too great for his ploy to work, and his spells met a wall of shields. Soon, the last of the hexes was neutralized.

Again, Harry bemoaned Voldemort's almost obscene level of preparation. How had this happened? The Death Eaters had been keyed into the Anti-Apparition Wards, yes, but they needed to have visually acquainted themselves with their destination first. They must have done so when Harry was going mad in his bedroom. He couldn't very well blame the Order - Mundungus wasn't worth Fluffy's excrement or a centaur's seminal fluid. The thug must have been too inebriated to spot the Death Eaters as they filtered in and out of Privet Drive, to reappear later in force.

Strangely, he did not feel any anger or despair. Rather, an empty feeling of amusement at the skill of a colleague who had outwitted him.

Of course, that did not change the fact that he was standing there, facing enough Death Eaters that suffocating in a cloud of Killing Curses was a distinct possibility.

The duo stood back to back, wands at the ready. Already, their minds were working, frantically trying to find a way out that did not involve a suicidal stand against enemies numbering well beyond the scope of plausibility.

"This, Harry," Dumbledore spoke grimly, "is where creativity begins to happen."

* * *

**Author's Note: **

So, that's my style. Dumbledore and Harry finish off slaughtering a bunch of Death Eaters, and then take some downtime to discuss the finer points of magical theory. _I _thought it was kind of funny...

Andro


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

**_Chapter Three: _**De-rezz Avoidance

* * *

"Harry Potter. It took fifteen years, but now I can say with surety that your family is finally dead. You are now all that remains of the Potter legacy."

Lucius Malfoy gazed down the length of his mask's ridge, fifteen lesser Death Eaters convened behind him.

Harry burst into laughter.

He was terribly un-amused, the impulse to superheat Malfoy's mask onto his face taking all his willpower to control. He was fairly confident that between himself and Riddle's repertoire, he could accomplish such a task, but he still held onto the hope that he could devise a plan to circumvent another battle.

Dumbledore tensed at his back, but did not turn to face Malfoy, knowing that the moment he did so the other group of Death Eaters would spring on him.

"Azkaban spat you back out, did it?" Harry asked sharply, "Can't blame the poor prison. And for your information, the Dursleys died by my hand, not yours. Furthermore, I'm still alive, and until that changes - which, from what I understand, Voldemort isn't going to brook - you've nothing to boast about."

Malfoy bristled. "I offer you the option of surrender. Conditional, of course. You and Dumbledore will lay down your wands and allow us to escort you to the Dark Lord. Refuse, and we will force your compliance."

"No thank you," Harry declined with a rueful smile. "Force our compliance Voldemort's developer's ass."

Immediately thereafter, he wondered whether anyone aside from himself knew what a developer's ass was. It wasn't too foreign a concept - one just had to walk behind Umbridge, and understanding would come of its own accord.

"Then you leave us no choice," Malfoy said slowly, relishing the words as he raised his wand.

_The humor is lost on him, at any rate, _Harry thought, suppressing a smile.

"I've always told you that you would regret _your_ choice," Dumbledore spoke loudly, eyes fastened on the other Death Eaters, a note of uncharacteristic menace rising to dominate his tone. "That Mark will be your undoing."

The air stilled as all movement ground to a halt, each present taken aback by his prophetic threat.

And then –

"Take them!" Malfoy roared.

There exists a Muggle saying, pondering the counter-intuition of how being surrounded by more enemies reduces the chances of being hit.

It held true in the Wizarding World…

After a fashion.

Dumbledore seized Harry tightly by the shoulder as he raised his wand, a fiery glow emitting from its end like a torch. The bright glow separated itself from the wand and shot into the air, where it hovered before bursting apart in a cascade of fiery strands. They fell to the ground, enclosing them within a gelatinous half-sphere. The golden hexagonal shield resembled a bubble, and would hopefully take much more than a pin to burst.

It glimmered, the thick layer of magic distorting the outside world, stretching houses grotesquely as the Death Eaters let loose a mixture of yellow, black, red, violet, orange and every color imaginable.

Including one emerald green.

Harry instinctively dove as the Killing Curse punctured a hole through the shield, flying harmlessly overhead and piercing through the other side. Unruffled, Dumbledore fed more power into his creation, sealing the breach.

"No!" Harry heard Malfoy shout dimly over the cacophony of screeching spellfire. "We must not risk Potter's death!"

The hexagons comprising the Bubble Shield flared brilliantly with each collision. Harry noted that it was thermodynamic, darkening from golden to a mild orange to a dangerous crimson.

The spells kept coming, setting the shield ablaze, and soon Harry had the eerie impression that he was trapped inside a dying red giant. Outside nebulae of every shade imaginable swirled, becoming more exotic as more spells flew into them, sending ripples from the points of impact. The hexagons began shifting inwards towards the duo, knocked out of place, and yet still held together. Harry swallowed nervously, but Dumbledore's breathing was calm and controlled, giving no indication that he had any difficulties maintaining their protection.

By the time Malfoy shouted for his troops to cease fire, the shield was a superheated, disfigured caricature of its former self. Riddle's knowledge rose to the surface of his mind, and then Harry knew that the nebulae were the curses and hexes intercepted by the shield broken down into their raw energies.

As if pleased by his revelation, the nebulae undid themselves, separating into countless singular-colored speckles of light. Without warning, the hexagon tiles snapped to their original positions, propelling the spells back to whence they came, rapidly cooling from scarlet to their original golden.

The Bubble Shield shined merrily for a single glorious moment, almost as if in childish delight for foiling the assault of nearly thirty wizards, before fading away.

The Death Eaters watched gob-smacked as their own spells, perfectly reconstructed by Dumbledore's remarkable shield, rushed eagerly to meet them. It was as if they were witnessing a replay. Then, their panicked voices broke out as they scrambled for the counters, fumbling with the wands they had foolishly lowered.

Their ranks were thinned considerably in the ensuing chaos, several dropping bonelessly to the ground, torsos smoking from the reflected curses of their companions.

Wasting no time, Dumbledore swept his wand, attaching the remains of the gutted BMW into a skeletal bipedal construct, lending it an ethereal white glow streaked with blue. As an afterthought, Dumbledore affixed the tailpipe to what appeared to be its torso. With a commanding flick of his wand, it jauntily began jogging towards the diminished Death Eaters surrounding Malfoy.

The Death Eaters recovered, and began pouring spells into the approaching construct. Killing Curses slammed into it, to no avail. The blue streaks of its aura diminished, but the white glow surrounding it didn't fade. Riddle's knowledge once again rose to the occasion, identifying the streaks as the visible manifestation of the Protection Enchantment, and the white as the Detonation Enchantment. It made sense, the Protection Enchantment would keep the automaton intact while it moved to its target.

_Wait – Detonation Enchantment?_

Harry's eyebrows rose expectantly as the crude machine reached the Death Eaters. Tensing its legs, it propelled itself into them. The Death Eaters backed away, but the distance they put between them and the walking time-bomb was too little too late.

The reincarnated Bavarian Motor Works exploded a second time, slaughtering a batch of Death Eaters once more.

A tailpipe clattered at Harry's feet, smoke billowing out of the opening.

_Even machines hate your minions Voldemort_, Harry thought with a smile.

The Death Eaters watched in disbelief as half of their number disappeared in a firestorm, the ground a dozen Death Eaters had stood upon an instant earlier now nothing more than a blackened crater. The slain wizards themselves were reduced to a fine sprinkling of ash, their cremated remains soon swept away by the wind.

"The battle is not yet won, Harry," Dumbledore stated quietly.

Sensing weakness, headmaster and protégé pounced, wands flashing with their ire.

"_Stupefy! Obfirmum!" _Harry shouted, determined to pull his share of weight.

Two beams of red light streamed from the end of his wand towards the Death Eaters, crumpling one of them.

Broken from their reverie, the rest sent a volley of curses that utterly dwarfed Harry's output. Beams of light coalesced as they intersected to form a multi-colored wave of magic.

Harry sidestepped the concentrated wall of Dark Magic, Dumbledore casually deflecting spells along the wave's periphery. The headmaster abstained from attacking, and was instead intent on depriving the Death Eaters of distance they could use to dodge his spells.

The commanding Death Eater screamed frantically for his underlings to subdue the approaching wizards. They complied, flinging curses left and right, forcing Harry to weave his way around them.

The air reeked of Dark Magic, the malevolent energies bleeding off the spells, contaminating the air he breathed, tiring him just by being in their proximity. His vision started to tunnel on the Death Eaters in an attempt to prevent his concentration from slipping.

"_Offenvox!" _a Death Eater bellowed, wand unleashing a torrent of electricity.

Harry bent himself at the waist as the strand of lightning flew for him with a grimace, nostrils flaring as he perceived the burning scent of ozone.

He bounded forward, and found himself staring challengingly into the eyes of the offending Death Eater, less than a meter away.

The air warped with a miasma, and another outburst of insight courtesy of Voldemort brought him the knowledge of how to ignore it.

"_Relashka!" _he said sharply, sweeping his wand in low before him.

Darkness flooded his veins as crushing force battered at the Death Eater's shield, its flimsiness condemning the person it protected. Blood spurted out of the mask's openings like a fountain as the Death Eater doubled over in mortal agony, feet lifted off the ground.

The residual energies of the Curse, shaken free of the spell's body, evaporated the crimson liquid before a single droplet landed. The spell lifted the battered wizard and flung him onto the roof of a house with enough force to shatter shingles, an undercurrent of energy dashing the Death Eater behind to the ground before its power expired altogether.

Harry breathed more easily, his outburst of Dark Magic softening the decaying air's passage to his lungs.

Vengeance came swiftly as enraged voices rang out.

_**"Iulgra!" **_

"Vexameum!"

"Rumperis!" 

Harry's mind reeled as the stopper to Voldemort's knowledge abruptly dissolved. The Throat-Cutting Curse, the Bone-Breaker, the Bone-_Twister_, Harry recognized as Riddle processed them with mechanical efficiency. The rest were drowned out, and not even Tom Riddle's subconscious could identify the curses as they flew at him.

_All I know is that the Death Eaters might have forgotten that Riddle explicitly told them he wanted me alive. _

And they certainly forgot that he had no intention of making that their decision.

_"Contegorum!"_

Abruptly, the air tasted foul on his lips as Harry cast the advanced Shielding Charm he had seen Dumbledore cast.

It was insubstantial not at all like the iron solidity of Dumbledore's. The shade of silver was mottled with sickly black lesions, as if his magic itself protested his use of such a benign spell so soon after casting one belonging to the Dark Arts.

The Death Eaters' barrage lashed his protective screen, sending spidery cracks through it. It endured the first six – _which makes five more than my Protego would have, I'm sure _- but gave way to the seventh – _why is it always seven?_ – and then he was blasted into the air, sailing at breakneck speed.

He shut his eyes tightly as the Death Eater loudly called out an incantation.  
_  
"Acerbus Advertere!"_

He was given enough time for Riddle's persona to supply a name. The North Wind Curse did not sound pleasant at all.

He uttered a hiss of pain as magic-generated winds wrapped around him in a cocoon, freezing him in place in midair.

_So cold…_

The icy winds whipped at him, tearing into him ravenously. Harry feebly attempted to break the Curse, only to find that his wand had been torn from his grasp.

Unexpectedly, the howls of air rushing past his ears died away, and Harry caught a glimpse of Dumbledore striding towards him. With an elaborate twirl of his wand, a globe of fire encapsulated Harry, wind-cocoon and all, shattering the Curse's hold on his student.

Flame and wind vanished, leaving Harry plummeting downwards.

Harry dreaded the impact, but was relieved to find his fall being slowed by an Momentum-Arresting Charm.

Five feet from the ground, it expired as the Death Eaters struck out at Dumbledore, forcing the aged sorcerer to cut off the Charm and defend himself.

Harry met the ground, breath leaving him in a whoosh of air. Gasping, he shakily pushed himself onto his knees.

The Death Eaters readied themselves for another coordinated blast, and let loose, releasing another wave of magic directed solely at Dumbledore. With a burst of speed that belied his age, Dumbledore darted headlong into it.

_Someone's a Gryffindor. _

"Professor!" Harry shouted, horrified.

Harry's spirits buoyed as a flare flew from the end of Dumbledore's wand, Bubble Shield springing into existence. But it didn't have enough time to neither envelop Dumbledore nor to fully solidify. The wave of spellfire crashed into it, rapidly overheating the shield. Overwhelmed, the shield collapsed, failing to reform the curses it had absorbed.

The resulting explosion forcibly separated Dumbledore from the Death Eaters, a shockwave churning granite like pebbles and blowing them all off their feet.

Dumbledore landed painfully on the sidewalk, his old age never more apparent as he slowly rose.

The Death Eaters had already arisen, and now advanced on him with taunts.

Inspiration emboldened Harry, and he dragged himself to the sidewalk, snatching a charred wand – not his own, but a Death Eater caught in the explosion of Dumbledore's construct.

Praying fervently that fate was favoring him today, Harry extended his wand arm. _"Lumos!"_

Dumbledore's eyebrows shot upwards as a triple-decker stretch of purple blurred past him.

Harry grinned. In front of him, in all its flamboyant glory, was the Knight Bus.

The enchantment over the vehicle that shunted aside structures and barns also happened to affect humans. Harry would have preferred that the Knight Bus run them over. In reality, it had scattered the Death Eaters everywhere with immense force, sending the fortunate sailing through fences and ploughing into gardens, and the unfortunate skidding on the ground until their necks snapped against the curb.

Out of spite, Harry began breaking the bones of a most unfortunate Death Eater that had landed a few feet away from him.

_"Rumperis, Rumperis, Rumperis..." _

Harry was so engrossed in administering his justice that he didn't notice that Dumbledore stood next to him until he heard him clear his throat.

"It is time to make our escape."

Stan Shunspike ogled at him, mouth agape at the scene of destruction, forgetting his conductor's speech.

Dumbledore patted Stan sympathetically on the shoulder as he brushed past him, disappearing onbard with a swish of his robes.

Harry raised his confiscated wand, feeling anxiety bubble in his chest as he did so. "_Accio wand." _

He waited, standing there. Seconds flew by, but his wand did not come flying to him. Slowly, he let his arm drop by his side, clenching his hand into a fist around the wand, feeling cold at the foreign texture. It was not holly. Loss clawed at him bitterly, and he took a deep, shuddering breath in a vain attempt to master himself.

Finally, he felt anguish, a feeling that the slaughter of his relatives and the despair of being pitted against so many enemies had failed to stir.

He saw the Death Eater.

The man was blessed with unconsciousness, for he now sported a broken elbow, forearm, and hip.

Malfoy was right. The Potter blood flowed through only he, and he alone.

_"Rumperis."_

Add broken kneecap to the list of injuries.

"Stay down, bitch!" Harry warned.

And with that he boarded the Knight Bus, basking in that macabre satisfaction, selfishly taking as much comfort as he could from that cruel sentinent.

In that moment, Harry felt as if it was the only thing left to him.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

**_Chapter Four: _**From Frying Pan to Fucking Inferno

* * *

The interior of the Knight Bus was dimly lit, its passengers either lying or sitting on beds that were – quite wisely – bolted down. Harry leaned back against the window, Dumbledore reposing on the next bed down the aisle. The young witch sitting across from Harry squirmed under his harsh, bafflingly hostile gaze. She tried to focus on the Daily Prophet she held in her hands, but her discomfort was obvious nonetheless. Dumbledore looked upon the scene in bemusement. 

Inevitably though, he took pity as he was wont to do.

"You seem abnormally tense, Harry," he remarked lightly, swinging his legs so that he sat on the side of the bed.

"Do I now?" Harry asked dully, turning to face him.

Dumbledore bit into a piece of chocolate, chewing thoughtfully. "Do I dare say that you feel some measure of sorrow for the deaths of the Dursleys?" he questioned, offering him a slab of chocolate.

Harry wordlessly accepted the slab, and shoveled it into his mouth. Swallowing savagely, he glared daggers\at Dumbledore, letting the headmaster know the folly of his words.

Dumbledore's face fell in disappointment. "I should have listened to Minerva all those years ago," he said wistfully, "She had observed the Dursleys prior to my arrival, and told them in no uncertain terms that they were the 'worst kind of Muggles' she had never seen."

"Yeah. They were fucked up people," Harry said shortly. "But… they would have turned out better without the influence I had on their family. Maybe not a lot, but at least a little. And maybe I wouldn't have to be ashamed of them."

That was more painful to Dumbledore, Harry knew. The calm acceptance, the refusal to rail against the whitebeard bit more deeply than outrage. It denied the headmaster the knowledge that his anger was expended, instead of restrained in favor of courtesy. The slate was not made clean.

_Their ignorance was what they held most dear, and he stole it from them._ They _would never have forgiven him, even if I do._

"I can only offer my deepest apologies," Dumbledore stated gravelly. "The subject of your guardianship factionalized the Wizengamot more thoroughly than the war that brought about the loss of your parents. Suspicion was rampant in those days, and those I trusted implicitly were unsuitable for becoming your guardian for whatever reason. Remus could not overcome his personal demons. Moody was embroiled in hunting down Voldemort's unmarked supporters. And so I turned to the Muggle world. It seemed ingenious at the time, but not nearly so right now. I had counted upon that they were not the worst case. Muggles' capacity for inflicting pain is infinitely dwarfed by that of wizards."

Indeed, having experienced the Cruciatus Curse firsthand, the beatings that Vernon had occasionally administered in coke-fueled rages were laughably tame.

"Something else disturbs you, then," Dumbledore said knowingly.

Harry exhaled. "I lost my wand in the fight. I tried a Summoning Charm, but my wand didn't answer it."

He hadn't only been bereft of his most prized possession, but also of the Priori Incantatem phenomena, which was the only thing that had saved him in the graveyard duel.

This," his face contorted with resentment as he indicated the wand he had lifted off the street, "is what I have to make do with."

Dumbledore smiled gently. "Your Summoning Charm failed because I had already cast it."

Harry's eyes lit up in recognition as Dumbledore produced his beloved wand. He reached out to take it eagerly, but Dumbledore spoke, halting him.

"Not yet," Dumbledore said, voice quiet but steely. "I have taken the liberty of wiping all trace of dark magic from your wand. I understand that you have assimilated some of the spell lore that Voldemort forced on you. It cannot be helped, but the question remains. What are you to do about it?"

Harry stared back at Dumbledore blankly, slowly returning his outstreched hand to his side.

Dumbledore's gaze didn't soften. With a sigh, Harry began to speak.

"It… hurt to breathe. It was like I was trapped in a room of contaminated air," he said thoughtfully, "It was Dark Magic. The only way to breathe freely was to use it."

"Contaminating yourself so that you cannot taste outward contamination is not the solution," Dumbledore pointed out calmly.

Harry took a deep breath. "What would you have me do? Is it normal? At the graveyard last year, I didn't feel anything, even though Voldemort's spells were ost assuredly dark."

"It is to be expected. You are nearing your sixteenth birthday, and thus, your magical maturation. Your sensitivity to magic is beginning to increase."

"Ah," Harry drawled. "It seems so characteristic of me to reap the disadvantages instead of the benefits."

He wrinkled his nose. There was a reek in the air that he couldn't quite place.

Dumbledore chuckled, perhaps too set at ease by his good-natured sarcasm to notice his uneasiness. "Don't be so hard on yourself. It is one of the reasons I chose the school year for you to learn Occlumency."

_Vintage, Dumbledore, pure vintage_, Harry reflected ruefully. The wily headmaster had stated why Harry should learn Occlumency, but hadn't given him all the reasons.

"It would lessen your perception of the Dark Magic's taint," Dumbledore went on, "It is why so many inquisitions to eradicate Dark Magic have failed. Casting Dark Magic on a large scale perpetuates its existence. Even Aurors sometimes succumb. Dark Wizards corrupt their hunters, dying only to be replaced. And so the cycle continues to be unbroken."

Harry blinked, disbelieving. "How do I put an end to it if I can resist only by using Occlumency, which is effectively disabled by Voldemort?"

Dumbledore looked pensive. "There is a method that I know of, but will require consideration."

Sudden fear assailed Harry. "This is all part of his strategy isn't it? He's trying to keep me open to corruption!"

"Don't be too quick to jump to conclusions," Dumbledore said sharply, leaning forward and jabbing a long spindly finger into Harry's chest, causing the younger wizard to flinch. "Others have paid the price for it."

Harry narrowed his eyes, astonished that the old warlock had the audacity to bring up Sirius, but conceded the point. That truth would resonate within him forever.

"His intentions are circumspect. Surely you know this, having assimilated part of his persona. It could be what you proposed, but he could be relying on your fear of it."

"No," Harry interrupted aggressively as his mind arrived at Dumbledore's conclusion. "I can't be kept from battle, even with this… risk."

Dumbledore peered at him over the rim of his spectacles, but Harry held his gaze firmly. A gentle thrust of Legilimency brushed against his paper-thin Occlumency shields. Without hesitation, Harry dissolved his defenses.

"Is it not possible? Countless times Voldemort has played on the fears of his enemies, prompting them to act on something more subtle," Dumbledore argued.

"The door swung both ways. Voldemort took part of my essence when replacing it with his. He knows me. He's hoping to alter my magic because he knows that I will fight him, even if it means braving whatever fanciful phenomena's at work."

"The solution will take care of both possibilities," Dumbledore said dismissively, "We will implement it once we return to headquarters. On to sunnier matters. We have dealt Voldemort a heavy blow in eliminating several of his Death Eaters," Dumbledore's tone took an optimistic upturn. "And we have broken free of his trap."

The Stunner that slammed into Harry's vulnerable back heartily disagreed.  
---

Harry regained consciousness, head throbbing painfully.

It was dark; the only sources of light were that of spells rocketing past. Dumbledore loomed protectively over him, batting spells back down the length of the aisle without pause. Their beds had been uplifted and set on their sides, providing shelter for them. The Death Eaters had done the same, erecting partitions all along the bus.

Shaking the cobwebs from his mind, Harry climbed to the feet. He glanced at the unconscious form of the witch that had been reading the Prophet, and everything became abundantly clear.

"We leap from the frying pan into the fire," Harry remarked.

He felt detached from it all. No longer did the prospect of fighting for his life faze him. He'd spent so much of his life defending it that one more battle didn't make much of a difference.

Dumbledore passed Harry his wand. Harry eagerly accepted it, almost looking forward to using it again, to reclaim the certainty that it was his in the heat of battle.

"On my mark," Dumbledore said grimly, "We must commandeer this vehicle. Do not hold back, the stakes are higher than ever before. We can be most assured that our life spans will be longer the further away we are from the bus' destination."

A twinge of dread revelation brought Harry to full combat awareness. Dumbledore was right. They'd been lured onto the Knight Bus, and filled it to full capacity with Death Eaters. It traveled at, for all intents and purposes, supra-luminal speed, neutralizing their advantage of supremely powerful magicks. Anything too destructive would send the vehicle careening into oblivion. They would have to fight man-to-man.

_When does it end_, Harry pleaded to a callous god. At a stroke, Voldemort had put them at a huge disadvantage, and separated Fawkes from them. Now it was much more probable that both were to be the Dark Lord's guests.

Harry squared his shoulders.

_It _will _end, and I _will_ be there to spit in Voldemort's face._

"Now."

_Whether I be destined to prevail or Tom._

The wizards swept out from their pseudo-compartment, the air in front of them vision blurring with torrential spellfire. Harry began moving towards the front of the bus as Dumbledore strode rearwards.

_"Resiaco!" _

Snaring the leg of an upturned mattress with an invisible tether, he slung it down the aisle. Spells impacted into it, rending the mattress violently with almost comical gouts of feathers, and springing coils free. Ruptures were torn in the steel structure, perforating it. The Death Eaters were forced back into the cover of their apartments to let it fly past. A Disintegration Curse intercepted it before it reached the windshield, vanishing it completely.

_"Templis ignes inferre!"_

Harry let fly another spell before taking refuge in another cubicle.

Floating feathers gradually descended, but were vaporized with the passage of ghostly fire. A Death Eater fell in a smoking pile of ruined flesh, only a split second passing between the moment he caught sight of the projectile and before he received it to the chest. Another screamed horrifically as he emerged too soon in the fire's wake, the trailing flames wreathing his wand arm, curdling fingers into shriveled appendages barely worthy of being termed digits.

_"Vicarithemis!" _

At the opposite end of the bus, four Death Eaters took one look at the glowing red blanket of magic Dumbledore threw at them, and slunk behind cover. Not missing a beat, Dumbledore conjured revolving mirror above the stretch of aisle between the makeshift compartments.

The mirror completed its revolution, dividing the mantle of magic. The separated halves of the spell ricocheted off the enchanted glass and into the compartments housing the Death Eaters. Bright flashes of light emanated from them, leaving only silence and darkness behind when it faded. Satisfied, Dumbledore pivoted. He slogged doggedly through an onslaught of curses and threw himself sidelong into the partition opposite of Harry's.

"It is as if Voldemort has drunken Felix Felicis," he observed.

"What?" Harry asked in puzzlement.

"Luck Potion," Dumbledore elucidated. "It is only a figure of speech, but it excels at capturing the situation, does it not?"

"Actually that seems plausible…" Harry said slowly, deeply perturbed by the possibility.

"Snape is the only one of all of Voldemort's Potion Makers capable of brewing the concoction. Voldemort has not drunken any," Dumbledore said confidently.

Harry's mouth tightened as hatred began clouding his thoughts at the mention of the detested Professor.

Sparks rained down on them, and Harry cursed the fact that he was aboard a triple-decker bus, and that he had forgotten it.

A Death Eaters landed in between them, and rammed his shoulder into Harry's mid-section. Harry held his ground, resisting his attacker's momentum and seizing the man by the throat. Muscles tensed, and he dashed the back of the man's skull against the underside of the bed bordering his right.

The Death Eaters shook it off, but received a roundhouse to the sternum that maintained the distance between him and Harry.

"_Silimcor!"_

Dumbledore was quick to react, dropping the assailant with a silver-colored spell, immediately inducing the pallor of death in the mortally wounded Death Eater.

Harry froze, however. Dumbledore, blasting away a Death Eater rushing towards them in hopes of exploiting the distraction, noticed and followed his deadened gaze to the left forearm of the slain man.

The limb that was not branded with the Dark Mark.

And light slowly departed the eyes of the dying man - eyes that betrayed the vacancy imposed by the Unforgivable that stole free will and ground it into dust.

"The Imperius?" Dumbledore whispered, mystified.

Bitterness welled up in them both. Time slowed to a crawl as they stared, heedless to the other Imperiused that fell from above, repopulating the rear half of the bus Dumbledore had cleared of enemies and enclosing them, the odds steeper than ever.

Blood snaked towards them, filling and overflowing the nearly depthless grooves in the aisle. The blood of the innocent, and the blood of victims, spilled by their wands.

"If Voldemort hasn't drunken any Felix Felicis…" Harry felt as hollow as his words.

Bloody trickling from the Imperiused wizard caught by his fiery conjuration lay face-down, slain brutally in Harry's desire to inflict his justice.

More crimson streams trickled from the battered corpses resting their eternal peace at the opposite end of the bus and met the lone rivulet, converging the sins they had unwittingly commited.

"... it is because he has bathed in it."

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Nah, the mindless slaughter hasn't stopped... yet.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Notes: **Has the mindless slaughter stopped yet? Read on, intrepid reader.

* * *

**_Chapter Five: _**System Failure

* * *

Harry's incendiary outbursts became half-hearted Stunners and Dumbledore's professional combat spells declined in lethality. Everything changed now that they knew they fought puppets who, despite the evil of their puppeteers, were themselves innocent. The fact that five lay dead because of the Death Eaters enraged Harry, and the fact that he could not take out his anger on them enraged him even further.

They faced opposite ends of the bus, wracking their minds for the solution.

Harry caught a glimpse of Riddle conversing with Nagini, and found the answer.

"Sir, is Parseltongue Dark?" he asked urgently over his shoulder.

"You know my feelings on the matter," Dumbledore answered promptly. "Only the likes of Slytherin and Voldemort brought its association to the Dark Arts to pass-"

"Very good," Harry cut him off hurriedly, "_Serpensortia."_

A cobra appeared at his feet, its scales night black and filmy eyes red.

_Are you venomous?_ Harry snapped in Parseltongue.

_It depends, _it eyes focused on the blood pooled nearby, forked tongue flicking hungrily. _Venomous to what?_

_Humans_, Harry prompted.

_Why, you__'__re in luck. Anyone I bite will recover within a matter of days.  
_

Sighing, he repeated the spell, conjuring more of the creatures until he had a score slithering and hissing around his feet. They immediately began conversing as if they were lifelong associates, debating the cost-benefit of crossing the aisle and risking getting hurt in the crossfire in order to reach the blood.

Parseltongue was tied deeply in its own form of magic. Unfortunately, Harry had received only the smallest fraction of Voldemort's knowledge for the subject. The greater the proficiency one possessed in the art, the greater the control one wielded over the snakes and the more venomous the creations could be.

Harry's inexperience worked to his advantage however. He had no intention of poisoning the people aboard if he could help it.

_If you cooperate with me and attack the passenger further up the bus, I'll feed you rats for the rest of your life, _Harry promised.

The snakes looked at each other, hissing too rapidly for Harry to keep track of. The first of the snakes Harry created suddenly spread its hood and bared its fangs, cowing another into submission. Having won the position of spokesperson, it turned to Harry.

_Deal, _it agreed with a curt nod._ I'll be most displeased if you renege on it._

_I'm as pure as the driven snow, _Harry reassured, and then spoke "_Dissuageo," _Disillusioning them.

They squabbled fiercely. Impatiently, Harry separated them into tens and sent sparks at them. Hissing indignantly, they slithered through the crook between the wall and partitions.

Shrill shrieks rang out, along with the sibilant laughter of snakes.

He had his opening. Dumbledore stepped out of shelter as he did, and they made for the front of the bus.

The last bit of moisture in Harry's throat dried as he beheld the view looming greater and greater before it all but dominated the windshield.

* * *

Voldemort watched the flamboyantly purple vehicle in its high-velocity approach. Light of magic flashed along its length, but it quickly outstripped them, leaving temporary visual imprints in the air. It was little more than a blot streaking towards him, still only at the vanishing point of the horizon.

"Puppets didn't take them quietly after all," Bellatrix Lestrange observed from his side, her tone more gleeful than disappointed at the Imperiused company's failure.

His feelings were the inverse. For the sake of practicality, he had given orders for his arch-nemeses to arrive bound and wandless, but he found himself entertaining other possibilities.

He dearly wished he could have seen the expressions of the boy and the Old One of horror upon disembarking if they had arrived unprepared to see him and his followers in full. Now they certainly knew that he was waiting for them.

It would have also have made a fine opportunity to bolster his image of invincibility.

All of his followers, nearly a hundred and a half of them, were gathered here - nearly twenty feet behind him.

It didn't bother him much. His servants gave him a wide berth because they could not abide physically being near him, despite their iron-clad loyalty.

It was called the Black Panic, bestowed upon a wizard that had plunged into the bottomless well of the Dark Arts and never surfaced again. Not for air, not for sunlight, not for _anything_. If one dove deep enough, and surpassed the need for light, for _redemption_, there was no need.

Once a mortal reached the threshold of his capacity for Dark Magic, their aura blackened. It simulated the effects of Dark Magic's malevolent effects – on everyone. Even those steeped in darkness would feel faint in his presence. Theirs was like a wafer-thin film, while his was an inky well of blackness. Those of the Light reacted even worse, and would within seconds begin to perspire, shiver, and suffer almost total loss of rationale.

It was the reason his Inner Circle dreaded taking seats at his table for the fortnightly conferences he presided over. Forcing his advisers to withstand the Black Panic instilled discipline, and it also asserted his leadership. Even if they could not endure him by sheer will, it was interesting to see how they dealt with the problem. Malfoy's incessant fidgeting in particular amused him to no end, and he wondered how much worse the pureblooded aristocrat's symptoms would be _without _a healthy dosage of Equanimity Potion.

Whereas, Bellatrix Lestrange was quite as ease, being the daughter of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black's Founding Father, Andromalius. The infamous Black Mage had cowed his rivals into submission and began building an army encompassing everything Dark, and corrupting pure creatures into his service. Ultimately, it had taken Morgan LeFay's last legitimate descendant to slay him, and the armies of several magical feudal lords to dismantle his legions. Andromalius perished in that confrontation, but had dealt LeFay's child a mortal wound in return. The grand duel had inspired countless lays.

Voldemort had studied one of them for his History of Magic class, in his youth. The countless pages of LeFay struggling to eke out a happy life for months before succumbing to his wounds amused him.

"No matter Bella, no matter," he responded airily, flexing spindly fingers around yew in anticipation.

He looked to the vehicle that bore his arch-nemeses, the both of them. The bus had crossed nearly half of the distance, and with his sharpened eyesight he caught a glimpse of green eyes, messy black hair, and most importantly: a scar.

Voldemort thought he saw fear.

* * *

The Dark Lord was absolutely right.

Harry felt fear acutely.

And fear often drove the fearful to great courage.

"_Maligovex!"

* * *

_

Voldemort narrowed his eyes as the bus swerved once, twice. It then steadied and drove at him.

He tensed slightly as he detected an outstretched wave of foreign magic, clashing intrusively with his aura, and he knew that the enchantment that moved objects from its path was at work.

He waited patiently for another second, before deciding that its driver was not planning on changing course.

He held fast, resisting the enchantment's attempt to fling him away, and dispelled it with an expert series of wand movements.

Earthen spires pierced a stretch of the road, sending slabs of granite flying away. With another exertion of power, he slanted them so that the blunt tips faced the oncoming vehicle.

The engine compressed like an accordion, stony lances shearing through it before the sheer force of the impact smashed apart his blockade. Voldemort craned his neck, smiling in amusement as the Knight Bus whirled end over in through the air, trailing mechanical parts.

The smile abruptly disappeared as two figures shot through the windshield like missiles, hurtling past the level ground and disappearing over the declination of a hill.

He wheeled around on his Death Eaters, displeasure forming a scowl on his lips. That bus would have ploughed straight through his followers, had he not dealt with it, but now they were between him and his goals.

He stayed the growl of annoyance rising in his throat.

"Extend the Anti-Apparition and Portkey wards by another fifty meters. Move! Think you they will await passively for you to surround them?_" _

The Black Panic swept out and sent the Death Eaters scurrying away in the opposite direction to escape its dread tendrils. Terror swooped upon them as Voldemort amplified the Panic instead of dampening it. He stomped after them frightfully, a wolf shepherd driving his flock before him.

"Swiftly! I'll flay you en masse if either escapes!"

They obeyed him, for none doubted that he could enforce his threat.

* * *

Coming to a stop in the roll, Harry's head snapped up, gaze following the ruined Knight Bus in its descent.

He gasped softly in disbelief as it ploughed heavily on its dorsal side beyond him, all three decks collapsing amid metallic screams and showers of sparks. It continued sliding, blazing a trail of displaced rock and stone.

Then, it disappeared before the edge of the cliff.

Harry shut his eyes painfully tight, berating himself.

_Does everything work on Riddle's terms?_

He had subdued a bus-full of Imperiused innocents, civilians really, and then gotten them killed.

A gigantic boom heralded the Knight Bus' plummet into the English Channel. Seawater raised from the plunge sprayed his prone form, soaking his long-sleeved shirt and trousers and shocking his mind from its muddled state.

"_Fuck," _he snarled, but the expletive wasn't enough. He gathered a deep breath, trembling with frustration, shame, and desperation. The fury of glass shards drawing blood paled in comparison to this! "_Damn it ALL!_" he screamed at the top of his lungs, an overwhelming sense of failure washing over him like the seaside drizzle.

He clawed at the moist dirt, and upon establishing a firm handhold, heaved himself to his feet. He swayed dangerously as he leveled a hateful glare at the line of black-robed figures arrayed across the hill's peak. A low murmur arose from their ranks. He strained to hear, but could not distinguish anything intelligible above the crashing of waves, and promptly abandoned the endeavor. If they were excited over the forthcoming death of their lord's nemesis, they didn't show it.

A crackle rang out, and the Death Eaters slowly began descending, never ceasing their menacing murmur.

He shifted his gaze from the looming procession to Dumbledore. The headmaster stood several feet behind him amidst tombstones, nonchalantly polishing half-moon spectacles. Harry boldly turned his back on the slowly advancing Death Eaters as he trotted to his ally.

"Well," he said, gesturing disdainfully at the approaching Death Eaters, "What now?"

Dumbledore rubbed at his eyes wearily before donning his spectacles. "The Anti-Apparition Wards have been extended. The time it will take for us to swim beyond their range will be more than enough time and opportunity for them to take us captive. We have little option but to stand our ground."

"Figures."

The Death Eaters made no sign of slowing, and prudently they moved away, trying to minimize the Death Eaters' advantage of the high ground. Harry knew something was wrong when he nearly tripped over a rectangular slab of stone in his withdrawal.

"Does this graveyard bode ill for us or for them?"

"Inferi," Dumbledore clucked his tongue in disapproval. "Their chief weakness-"

"Is fire. I know how to make them," Harry said, tapping his head. "I know how to get rid of them."

They stopped in the middle of the graveyard. Inferi were frail, slow-moving, and could easily be slung at the Death Eaters. The problem was the number of tombstones. Seventeen to a column, twenty-six to a row produced four hundred and forty two, he calculated. He could easily deal with a dozen, or even a score, but four hundred was too many to be manageable. Far, far too many. They'd be overrun in minutes.

"Any ideas?"

He was a long shot away from allocating a single Incendio to an Inferius – he'd die of magical exhaustion long before then. The same thoughts coursed through Dumbledore's mind.

"Yes, yes," Dumbledore responded without glancing at him, eyes fixed on the stirring graveyard. "This situation requires raw power – an enormous amount of it that can only be attained through implementing Dual-Core casting. Through the linking of our magical cores, we can process our magical casting at, I daresay, mythic speed. It requires absolute trust on the part of the pair involved. If even a spark of uncertainty were to remain, the results would be disastrous."

For a moment, Harry looked at a throwback to the Dumbledore of his fifth year. Speaking of trust, but not meeting his eye. He shook his head in resignment. There was nothing to be done. It was the only choice they had.

"I trust you, sir."

"Then let us defy every Minister since the Veil of Secrecy fell."

Dumbledore lifted his wand, a swirling blue glow beginning to form at its worn, wooden tip. Slowly, Harry raised his own, a darker shade of blue formulated at its end. Tendrils of their respective hues stretched out and merged. Harry felt a twinge of sadness as he imagined the rivulets of innocent blood converging, and he wondered what higher power was at work.

Ollivander had said that wands were only extensions of the wizard, and he was right.

The link went farther than connecting their wands, but attached the very sources of their magic.

The lids of coffins were removed as Inferi squirmed beneath the ground, struggling to breach the surface.

The air around him was sweltering now, and his skin flushed with heat. His bloodstream was enriched with a greater concentration of magic, and his vision sharpened as his eyes, their retinas cleared of the clouds formed from years of weakened eyesight. He absently brushed the cut on his cheek as the separated skin and tissue knitted together. It was as if his native magic considered the light wounds an affront to its very essence. Energies drawn from his core and Dumbledore's flowed down their halves of the link, and began reacting almost chemically as they meshed, increasing rapidly in density.

The strand connecting their wands faded, but he knew it was still there, stronger than ever and resting dormant until he called upon it.

The linking revitalized Dumbledore, and the headmaster went through the movements of the Banishing Charm. They were simplistic, and so were the results, but on a much grander scale. Harry's jaw dropped as the Inferi exposed to the air, numbering roughly half of the total four hundred, buckled, their knees giving and were sent flying back into their coffins.

Eager to test the expanded power at his command, Harry began making the movements of the Colloportus Charm. He had never cast it before, having only seen Hermione perform it in the Department of Mysteries, but happiness blossomed in his chest as he felt the tingle marking the successfully casting of magic. His wand wove fluidly, despite lacking the slightest muscle memory to aid him, Droplets of magic from the invisible reservoir pooled between him and Dumbledore rushed through the conduit into his body.

Fiery crosses blazed to life over the lids of the caskets as he cast a mass-Colloportus, trapping the Inferi.

The Death Eaters gave pause, surprised by the recent development and unnerved by the effortless removal of half the Inferi, but not daring to show any sign of cowardice in front of their master. Harry's glare intensified as he spotted the only figure among the Death Eaters whose head was not concealed by mask or hood.

"It will not save you," the Dark Lord laughed. "None of your gimmicks can save you."

"I would hardly call it gimmicky Tom," Dumbledore disagreed mildly. He accentuated his comment with a snap of his fingers. Coffins were torn apart as earthen geysers spewed vast amounts of soil into the air, demolishing an entire column of graves.

"Subdue them," Voldemort ordered sharply.

The Death Eaters took heart in their superior numbers, and resumed their march, wands out now, spitting sparks as they muttered protection charms.

None of them would make a difference.

"_Templis Ignes Inferre." _

Magic had never flowed through his veins in such abundance. He extracted enough power to level Privet Drive – the street, not merely any of its houses – from the pool of his magic and divided it into dozens of smaller sparks, directing them to each of the coffins.

They traveled to them, and fifty caskets went up in the ghostly flames of the Corrosion Fire, an exacting spell he had learned prior to his departure from Hogwarts. It was the most powerful spell in any of the textbooks outside of the Restricted Section.

Dumbledore gracefully took the reins from there, and sweeping his wand merrily, levitated all of the flaming caskets from their plots in the ground. They rose languidly into the air, and then Dumbledore flicked his wand at the Death Eaters, sending half of them flying forward.

An alarmed outcry signaled the start of what promised to be finally a one-sided battle. Streams of light rocketed into the air, intercepting the improvised missiles. Six of the caskets were blown out of their flight paths so that they fell short of their targets, and the rest fell among the Death Eaters. Most had gotten out of the way, but a handful was crushed against the slope. The rest were imbedded into the hillside like porcupine spines.

The Death Eaters recovered, and immediately swept past the coffins, finally making use of their advantage of the high ground, showering the duo with torrential curses.

So focused were they that they didn't notice the Corrosive Fire eating through the Sealing Charms Harry had placed on the casket lids. In short order, the covers were flung off, and Inferi, driven to a state of hyper-aggression by their closeness to the hated fires, emerged. They launched themselves down the slope, each latching onto the vulnerable back of an unsuspecting Death Eater below them.

Rotted teeth tore into throats eliciting sprays of blood. Inferi were ripped off by several Summoning Charms cast by the Death Eaters on still higher ground at once. Tugged with equal force in several directions, their bodies were torn apart. It was too late for nine of the assaulted Death Eaters, their lifeblood staining the hillside for days to come.

Harry and Dumbledore shared a look, and then turned back to the panicked horde of Death Eaters.

They lifted their wands, and the other twenty five caskets rose, even as Inferi scrabbled against the confining lids.

* * *

Voldemort rubbed his temples in aggravation.

Potter and his caretaker moved across the graveyard, setting caskets alight and sending them off with exuberant bangs. Their lids were torn off by the Inferi, who struck out against the surrounding Death Eaters.

His senior followers dispatched the Inferi expertly, but they were the minority and Inferi infested their ranks more quickly than they could be removed from them.

Evidently, he couldn't trust his initiates to be competent upon taking his Mark. He would have to enforce a training regime for them in the nearby future.

_Oh well_, he shrugged as he moved towards his enemies. _Another one born every minute. _

* * *

The array of caskets abruptly splintered into the tiniest fragments, the fires they fueled quenched by an invisible force.

"Enough!" Voldemort's voice rang out testily. "I will deal with this pestilence myself."

The Death Eaters ceased their attempts to get nearer to the Light wizards in thankfulness, clearing a path for Voldemort.

Dumbledore and Harry changed their tactics accordingly, extinguishing the Corrosion Fire and drawing the levitating caskets around them in a tight, protective ring.

Voldemort strode briskly, casting half a dozen spells in quick succession as he did so, all of which were deftly intercepted by the coffins.

Harry retaliated first, calling the fire again and blasting the coffin towards him. Voldemort sneered as he threw an Explosion Hex at it. Anticipating this, Harry conjured a gust of wind to angle his projectile downwards, so that the hex only barely skimmed the lid. The slight contact sufficed to shear it off, and send its undead inhabitant tumbling out.

The Inferius, the reanimated body of what used to be an obese hairless old man, grappled with the Dark Lord, but Voldemort seized it by its throat and broke its back over his knee, casting the decomposing corpse aside without regard.

"Do not offend me by believing my own creations will bring about my end," he scoffed.

Dumbledore responded by mass-Banishing the rest of the caskets in orbit around him. Voldemort waved his wand impatiently, spawning a slender, lightless arc that churned loose dirt, increasing in width.

It broadened enough to shield him from all of the caskets, and repelled them violently at twice their velocity, forcing his opponents to leap aside in opposite directions as the caskets carved gashes into the ground, raising clouds of dust.

He was quick to exploit their forced separation, darting in the gulf between them and unleashing a flurry of curses with a wide spread to drive Harry further away from Dumbledore.

"_Protego!" _Harry shouted, conjuring a shield.

It flared each time spells impacted, emanating waste Dual-Core casting minimized the expenditure of their magic by removing any excess magic, essentially refining their spells so that they could expend less energy to produce the same effect. Thus, his shield was several more times more powerful than it was in his Singular-Core state, but Voldemort's spells – despite him lacking a Dual-Core cohort – were imbued with enough power to whittle it down in only a few exchanges. A blood-tinged spell finally punched through and sent the boy reeling.

Voldemort's strategy was interrupted as a spell from Dumbledore narrowly missed, flying over his shoulder and atomizing a tombstone. He whirled around, spewing curses from his wand at Dumbledore while Harry barreled back at him fearlessly, throwing him on the defensive momentarily.

His plan backfired, and the Light wizards held the Dark Lord in a pincer, simultaneously unleashing billowing waves of pure, colorless magic, mirroring Voldemort's shield-wall spell. They overlapped, interlocking and leaving Voldemort no room to maneuver.

Without hesitation, Voldemort spun his wand, black strands of magic leaving his wand and settling into a cocoon around him. The waves of magic broke upon the encased Dark Lord, and the strands, silky and as dark as night, unraveled to reveal his livid, serpentine visage.

"Not enough!" he laughed chillingly. "Not nearly enough."

The Inferi that were buried along the graveyard's periphery began shambling towards the center where the three sorcerers clashed. At some unheard signal, the Death Eaters began closing in, casting spells in hopes of distracting the wizards their master fought, but were more or less ignored.

Voldemort's lip curled as his bid at separating Dumbledore and Harry failed, and ruby eyes darted from wizard to wizard calculatingly.

"I know what you're thinking, Riddle!" Harry addressed him mockingly. "You're thinking, _my God they have balls!_"

"I don't deny it," Voldemort answered, spreading his hands in a vaguely placating gesture. "I, however, have no intentions of emasculating you or the old one. I entreat you to see reason and parley."

"You are in no position to parley," Dumbledore's voice boomed.

"An ironic statement," Voldemort said sarcastically. "Considering you stand only a shadow of a chance at overwhelming me, even utilizing Dual-Core casting. I wish you the best of luck..."

His eyes glittered with triumph as a multitude of curses from his Death Eaters bombarded the pair opposing the Dark Lord while their attention was riveted on him, swallowing them up in an eruption of dislodged earth. Voldemort gathered a portion of his might, and discharged another wave of destructive power through the falling dirt, sweeping the detritus away and revealing –

Nothing.

He whirled around, a wordless snarl on his lips as he bisected an Inferius hurled at him from afar with a scythe. He spun his wand over his head, formulating a fiery glow, and brought his wand arm down ramrod straight, sending a whip-like stream of fire at his reappeared opponents.

They moved to either side of it, but failed to foresee the fire whip splitting into two, resembling the forked tongue of a serpent.

"_Geleticus!" _Dumbledore shouted, collecting all of the moisture in the air he could into a watery slate in front of him to parry the incendiary lash.

Harry was slower, and paid the price accordingly. He screamed as the fire looped around him and tightened suddenly, binding his arms to his sides. Voldemort flung the ensnared Boy-Who-Lived halfway across the graveyard, and fed more power into the prong striking Dumbledore, his wand a veritable flamethrower and Dumbledore's shield a void that pulled moisture from the air to reinforce it.

Steam rolled off in waves as water fought to protect Dumbledore from fire, obscuring Harry's vision.

Harry crawled back to his feet, pounding a lunging Inferius into oblivion as he rushed headlong into the newly created mist.

Light flowed through the vapor in defined beams, so luminescent that Harry could easily see them traverse the haze. He quickly determined Voldemort's location from seeing the darker colors, and stalked towards him. He chose his route so that it did not bring him through the crossfire, and so that he would be collinear with Dumbledore and Voldemort's positions. Voldemort would be facing Dumbledore, and he would have his free shot.

Soon, he glimpsed Voldemort's back, but hesitated when he began to mutter the first word of the Killing Curse. His discussion with Dumbledore rushed back to him. It had cleared up much. Dumbledore made it clear that he did not disapprove of killing the Death Eaters, but doing so with the Dark Arts.

Then, there was the disturbing conversation about corruption. He had no idea where the line dividing the Dark from what wasn't was, or how near he was to it. Paranoia plagued Harry. What if he cast the Killing Curse, and found after he performed the grisly deed that he could not cast his Patronus? Never see the shimmering stag that embodied his happiness?

He made his mind, and gathered every ounce of his power so that it was brought to a stormy tumult beneath his fingertips, and shaped it with his will. His wand buckled underneath the enormous surge of magic unembellished by color, heralded only by a pulsating throb of power.

It was effectively invisible, but the vapor shied away from the intense heat, rapidly clearing the mist.

Harry's blast caught Voldemort square between the shoulder blades, pitching the Dark Lord onto the ground in a crumpled, smoldering heap.

Harry's hearted pounded in his chest as he dragged himself forward. Dumbledore dissipated the mist, it having outlived its tactical usefulness. He cautiously approached Voldemort's fallen form.

With a strangled scream, Voldemort drew himself up, unleashing a shockwave of which he was the epicenter, blowing both of them off their feet.

"You have lived far too long, the both of you!" he hissed, voice dripping with venom.

Dumbledore shot to his feet just as Voldemort let loose another blast of rage-fueled power. Tombstones crumbled like dust, and Dumbledore's shield winked out of existence as he was blasted even further away.

Voldemort's attention turned to Harry, and the younger wizard backpedaled in alarm, hexes and spells of all manners leaving his wand in a continuous stream. Harry felt transcended, executing spells that normally took seconds to cast in the blink of an eye. No need to perform wand movements made itself apparent to him. And yet, Voldemort matched his pace without effort.

"_Veperio!" _Harry shouted, voice hoarse from uttering incantations nonstop.

"_Protista." _Voldemort's rejoinder came unhurriedly.

A silvery jet of light, spurred by the intensity of Harry's emotions, spiraled at the pursuing Dark Lord, who aligned a sapphire beam of equally offensive magic and let loose. The streaks collided in mid-air, the hues briefly warring for dominance. The body of silver dispersed into harmless embers and Harry hurriedly sidestepped the sapphire beam that, though lessened by the subtractive effect of the collision, still held more than enough power to disable him should it land.

"_Malherius!" _

Voldemort swept his wand from side to side, the long sleeves of his black combat robes moving in an arc to reveal a sheave of knives suspended in the air before him. Their blades glinted wickedly in the moonlight as he primed them, and launched them at Harry.

"_Aviatis!" _

Voldemort gave a huff of annoyance as Dumbledore rejoined the fight, transfiguring the hail of knives into a flock of birds. Doves flew over Harry harmlessly in their V formation and veered sharply, screeching as they dive-bombed the surprised Dark Lord with an aggression that seemingly betrayed their association with peace. They tore at his exposed face, hands, and his robes with their beaks and talons, before they were scattered to the winds by a shockwave directed into the air. His avian assailants squawked indignantly at being thwarted, and dove for another pass.

"_Semptere Novus!"_

Voldemort drew an intricate pattern in the air, and then his wand began uncontrollably spouting malevolent reddish-black fire, forming a half-dome above him. The doves flew straight into them before they could pull from their dives, brutally immolated. Singed and bloody feathers fluttered all around the Dark Lord.

In a flash of foresight, Harry thrust out his wand into the air above him, shouting "_Geleticus!" _

He had again never cast the spell before, but that didn't seem to be obstacle anymore. A prism of cerulean light formed, and began drawing the moisture thick in the air to it as Harry flung it at Voldemort. It rocketed towards him as the Dark Lord collected the protective fire into a globe that fit in the palm of his pale hand, glowing intensely with hellish energy. The prism was soon obscured in a sphere of water, miniscule droplets of the ocean spray being diverted to follow it. They appeared to follow the prism like droplets separated from a slushy snowball, save for the fact that it was unaffected by gravity and outstripped the prism, enlarging the globe of water around it as they were assimilated.

Voldemort sneered, and raising his open-palmed hand to his face, flicked his sphere of fire with his fingertip.

They collided explosively, meeting with the volume of a thunderclap. The water hissed like a nest of snakes as it was instantly brought to a boil by the superheated missile. It was a misshapen, ungainly body of liquid as nothing could be compressed in liquid state of matter, swallowing the far smaller sphere of fire. Then, the clear liquid blurred bright orange, and the slate imploded, ripped apart from within as the hellfire rapidly unwound, its structural fields broken by the impacting slate of water. It exploded outwards into a fiery maelstrom, evaporating and being quenched by the massive body of water in equal measure.

The subsequent mist of steam was impatiently waived by the three combatants.

"_Templis Ignes Inferre!" _

"_Ballad Calixtus!" _

Voldemort backed away, warding the powerful blows with some difficulty, and retaliated, cancelling out their shields with a shockwave and forcing them to seek cover with a widespread slew of curses.

"Still you limit yourself to the Common Arts!" he mocked. "You truly wound me."

_I wish, _Harry thought sourly.

He ducked behind a tombstone as the Death Eaters opened suppressive fire. Dumbledore's shouts drowned out their cries as the headmaster struck back at those attempting to pin him down.

"Where'd you get your army?" Harry called. "Surely there aren't that many purebloods in Britain?"

"Don't be so surprised, boy. Darkness is to be found everywhere," Voldemort answered, voice growing closer. "Some sources are just less pure than others. _Acerbicus!" _

Harry ran full tilt at the Dark Lord as the tombstone dissolved under a spray of acid, a lance of colorless magic buffeting Voldemort and tossing him away. Voldemort landed wraith-like on his feet. A timely deflection sent Harry's next spell ricocheting skyward.

There was no longer any distance between them, and they locked smoldering gazes.

He had been determined to stay with what he naturally knew, but now, even as his wand twirled in motion, he found himself at a loss as to what to cast.

He was no longer wrestling with his conscience while staring at Voldemort's back this time, but the _face_ of his parents' murderers.

His conviction to resist the Dark Arts faltered.

He stared into glittering bloodstones, and he felt sickened by the cruel mirth he saw lingering there, beneath the heavy layer of homicidal hatred.

_Fuck it. _

"_RELASHKA!!" _he bellowed, throwing conviction to the wind.

Surprise flickered across Voldemort's inhuman features as his shield crumbled under the most forceful performance of the curse he had ever witnessed. The power invested in the curse surpassed what he had poured into his shield by the merest hair's breadth.

The curse that had broken his shield, however, failed to break his composure. Its residual energy lifted Voldemort off his feet, but he landed with cat-like grace.

"Congratulations, Potter!" he shouted breathlessly. "You've done the nearly unprecedented - but then what?"

_This. _

"_Debellum!"_

"_Aegis!" _A dark dome sprouted in front of Voldemort, absorbing Harry's Nerve-Scrambler with only the slightest of ripples.

Frustration whittled at Harry's hitherto unbreakable resolve. He had done the nearly impossible and broken Voldemort's shield, but what did it matter if the bastard could simply cast a replacement the next instant?

"_Impactus!" _Harry's mouth opened in a silent scream as his right shoulder was fractured so thoroughly by Voldemort's counter-Bludgeoner that he was knocked completely off balance.

"And so you lose," Voldemort intoned quietly.

Harry's magic responded and began to reform his shattered shoulder, but the damage was done. The process itself was painful, and even if it healed before Voldemort's patience expired, his dexterity was impaired. He could no longer blur through the wand movements like he had done if his physical state of being could not keep up with his processing.

He would lose the duel should it resume.

Delirious with pain, he was only dimly aware that he now groveled on the ground, clutching his wounded wand arm. The wand itself clattered uselessly from his slacken grip, and he blinked at the Dark Lord looming triumphant above him.

"You have fought admirably Potter – so very admirably, in fact, that I offer you the chance to surrender. To save yourself."

Hatred that was hardly old was fanned to greater heights.

Harry's cheek met the ground, and he stared at the shambling feet of countless Inferi, heart thudding in his ears. Other feet moved with greater surety, and with an effort, he lifted his head, staring unblinkingly as scores of Death Eaters slowly drew in. He rolled heavily onto his other side, another stab of pain running down his arm as his weight put pressure on his crushed shoulder.

And Dumbledore…

Dumbledore still fought.

A golden globular shield disappeared, and Dumbledore bounded past a squadron of falling Death Eaters stricken by their own spells, wand spinning through an intricate series of loops and crosses in the air.

"_**LEVITICUS MEGIDDO ABBADON!"**_

Words of ancient, primordial power rent the air as radiant snowy white flecked with golden streaks flooded from Dumbledore's wand, a will only hardened by great age shaping it into a spear to shake mountains. Voldemort pivoted sharply on his heel, reflexes likewise only honed by age. He crouched, wand raised to meet the threat, but his utterances were silenced as the most powerful spell ever composed for the Light Arts speared into his chest, enveloping his form. Voldemort was ripped off his feet and carrying him past the cliff-face, his body nebulous as the Black Panic wilted in the stranglehold of magic whose purity put the most inbred of his followers to shame. It gracefully dissipated into a flock of silver wings that were swept away by the wind thirty meters past the cliff-face, A limp, shriveled body, only a speckle from this distance, plummeted, crashing through the ocean's surface.

"A monument to your death, Tom," Dumbledore spoke coldly, watching the disturbance in the stormy waters subside with detached eyes.

Harry delicately climbed to his feet, heartbeat drumming wildly.

Dumbledore stood enwreathed in a swirling silver cloud, his aura a physical manifestation unlike Voldemort's, so concentrated was his native magic.

He turned to face the Death Eaters, aura flashing warningly with his ire.

They quailed, drifting into tightly compact groups and even the Inferi hesitated, slinking back from the light that seared rotting skin worse than even fire.

"Your master has fallen!" Dumbledore voice boomed, words striking the black heart of each Death Eater present. "Stand down, and submit yourself to the jurisdiction of the Ministry."

None of them made a movement, but Harry, in his heightened sense of things, felt the undercurrents of hostility, fear, and cunning. Thoughts of power stolen from them in the form of their leader, and that they still numbered well over three hundred, including the remaining Inferi, Surely, they could overwhelm two wizards, no matter how powerful or seemingly invincible?

"Unless you prefer _my_ jurisdiction."

The accompanying flare of silver caused several to recoil in terror, but still none made to lower their wands.

Something would have to happen.

Someone would have to be made an example of.

"I am merciless on the battlefield," Dumbledore continued, the edge of his voice softening, "But I am merciful in the court. Lower your wands."

The magnificent silver aura, hitherto sustained effortlessly and awing the Death Eaters into silence, abruptly disappeared as Dumbledore folded, falling onto his knees with a strangled gasp.

"_Dumbledore!" _

Harry's horrified shout fell upon deaf ears. Sulfur and brimstone poisoned the air, and a membranous wing retracted, blood running down the length of its bone tip. A massive beast towered over Dumbledore's kneeling form despite being a quadruped. Twin wings, spanning nearly fifteen feet each, folded trimly on the dorsal of the creature. Its body was lean, and covered in immaculate, dusky scales from fore to rear. Demonic curved ram's horns adorned a brutish face, across which a twisted, fanged smile crossed, a furnace burning behind eyes that shone like the sun.

"H-Harry…" Dumbledore stuttered, shock and agony slurring his words.

_**Whose mercy does your life rest with now, old one?**_

The cruel words were spoken in the Dark Lord's perpetually mocking and sibilant tone, but resonated within Harry's mind itself. Alarmed by the revelation, Harry threw his Occlumency shields around his mind, but the next words passed unhindered.

_**Thrice you have struck at me and failed.**_

Harry lay there weakly, frozen in terror and helpless to aid the greatest of his protectors as the monstrous beast lifted a paw bristling with razor sharp claws.

_**Now I return the favor! **_

It struck, paw darting with the rapidity of a cobra's strike, shredding through the material of Dumbledore's robes and flesh. Dumbledore gave a pained scream, but was cut off as the beast threw its weight sideways, hurling Dumbledore over the brink.

The Death Eaters cheered.

Inferi continued to shamble towards him.

Voldemort's laughter rattled the foundations of his mind.

Harry snapped.

"_**Wingardium Leviosa**__!" _he bellowed, spittle flying from his mouth as he seized the faint link that still connected his core to Dumbledore, weakened by Dumbledore's grave injury though it was.

The first spell Harry had ever learned caught Dumbledore's falling body, wrestling with gravity with all his might, and bringing Dumbledore to a standstill. Voldemort's laughter ceased, and he snarled, nostrils expelling puffs of smoke and gouts of fire. Harry's grip turned white-knuckled as Voldemort brought his formidable mind magic to bear in opposition, cancelling out Dumbledore's rising momentum.

Harry lurched forward as his hold on his spell was broken. Dumbledore began to fall again, but Harry screamed his denial and renewed his hold, desperately dredging up all that the Dual-Core link had to offer. Every last droplet, every fiber of his own willpower.

He writhed under the excruciating pain that wracked his mind, but he chose to tighten his grip instead of letting go.

In the end, it wasn't enough.

Dumbledore noticed his fall vary from ascent to descent. Blue eyes that had first opened and seen daylight a century ago blinked in wonderment as they rested on the bespectacled boy who strained to hold his quivering wand arm aloft against the demon that snarled and hissed, its anger at defiance shifting from himself to the boy.

The contest of wills ended, and the cuts made by flying glass reopened, crimson seeping into Harry's vision.

Voldemort laughed, smoke billowing from slit-like nostrils.

Brokenly, Harry raised his head to meet Dumbledore's gaze one final time, fearing what he might find there.

He blinked furiously so that his guardian would be spared the sight of seeing blood behind his glasses.

What he saw terrified him. It was not the expression of a doomed man, but one of serenity.

In that moment, he hated that expression more than anything else in the world. It was the look of a man that humbly accepted the fate consigned to him, treasuring the time that had been allotted to him.

It was the look of defeat.

If Albus Dumbledore, a wizard with wisdom, experience, and knowledge beyond even his own considerable years fell to this hellish abomination, what chance did he, a mere teenager, stand?

Frantically, he tried to draw up a last remnant of power, and his eyes brimmed with tears when he found nothing. Dumbledore nodded at him sadly and gave the smile Harry had come to associate with the venerable headmaster - wistful, comforting, and compassionate in equal measure.

Harry spurred himself to strive harder, but he paused as Voldemort spoke again, tone colored by a note of pleasure, but not of gloating. Almost in respect.

_**Death cannot be averted, Harry. Not unless you possess the willingness to commit deeds appalling beyond imagining...  
**_

The turmoil dominating Harry's mind quieted.

_Death cannot be averted. _

Rather than prolong the death of a noble man, Harry docilely lowered his wand.

_Only delayed a little. _

The charm expired, and Harry bonelessly collapsed.

The world's greatest connoisseur of lemon-drops fell.

_**A monument to your death, Albus**, _Voldemort said mirthlessly.

* * *

The pain brought by the backlash of the connection snapping so suddenly was unparalleled even by the Cruciatus.

Harry screamed his throat raw.

It lasted only for the swiftest of instants, but it was like all the pain he had ever experienced compressed into a second. Every time Dudley and his gang had won a match of Harry-Hunting, every bout of Occlumency with Snape, the loss of Sirius…

It passed, and he sucked in lungfuls of air, his breath painfully short.

The fission that had shredded the Dual-Core connection to tatters left him cold and… human. He no longer had a vast reservoir of power to draw on. If he fought Voldemort, he would not cast the Dark Arts because he _could _not. It was not a choice between right or easy, but a question of whether he had enough power to successfully cast a Decapitation Curse.

He still mustered the energy to glare at Voldemort as the demon-beast stalked towards him.

_**The favor is repaid. **_

With an epiphany, Harry realized that Voldemort had not bypassed his Occlumency shields, but had been speaking Parseltongue. Bile rose in his throat as a forked tongue flicked out of the monster's mouth, tasting the air. Its wings flexed as it found the taint of the surrounding air to its satisfaction.

Then he felt the aura.

The Black Panic, kept at bay by the great quantities of magic supplied to him by the Dual-Core link, now took hold unimpeded. Cold beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and he began to shiver uncontrollably, teeth chattering.

A final expulsion of smoke obscured the hellion from view. The grey haze was waved aside, and Voldemort strolled through, humming in elation to himself.

The humming stopped as Voldemort reached the only wizard that ranked among his now one-name long list of nemeses and still lived.

That was subject to change.

_Your cleverness and resourcefulness has brought you far along the path, but for naught. Why does your intelligence desert you when posed with a simple question, with a simple answer? _Voldemort questioned curiously, voice somehow laced with almost genuine sadness.

Harry knew better, and could sense the deception screened by the honeyed-tongue, even if Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue.

_I offer you a place not at my feet, but at my side as fellow Dark Lord, colleague, sharer of my knowledge_._ Where my equal belongs._

Voldemort waited, but Harry refused to answer.

_Does that not appeal to you? Think of how many would defect to our cause when they learn that you have turned! Britain would be ours, and Europe ours for the taking. And we can ensure that orphaned children never undergo what you did. No Muggles would dare lay a hostile finger upon magical children under our reign. _

Harry realized that Voldemort chose to speak in Parseltongue because it was more intimate. It was a direct appeal from one Parselmouth of Britain, the master of one brother wand, to the other.

_Then… ah. _Voldemort's lips slowly curved upwards into a malicious smile. _Perhaps I need not try to appeal to your sense of justice, but to your darker side? Everything could be yours. Every girl you've longed for would be eager to serve you. The press has been a great source of grievance, has it not? Would you like to see the Daily Prophet in flames? How about Skeeter's head on a platter? Your classmate rivals would never dare _think _of slandering you! _

Voldemort waited more, but still Harry stayed silent. He was patient though, and opened his mouth, but Harry raised his head, eyes boring into his.

Slowly, Harry began to hiss back.

_Malfoy, _he muttered, legs gathering underneath him as he struggled to rise.

Voldemort nodded encouragingly.

_Malfoy, _Harry repeated again, voice growing stronger. _I want him dead. I want the Death Eater dead._

Voldemort smiled indulgently. _That can be arranged._

Harry's voice grew still stronger, and his eyes looked feverish. _I-_

His face worked terribly, and he shuddered once.

"- want them **ALL **dead**!" **he screamed, propelling himself forward.

Voldemort's smile abruptly disappeared.

'_Templis igness-" _

"_**Sanguinius veneficus."**_

Harry crashed to the ground, wand slipping free of his loosened fingers. With trembling hands he clutched at his chest. It was covered with his blood, but the flow was staunched by a foreign exertion of magic, and the blood darted over the surface of his skin. Harry dimly realized that the blood was arranged into a drawing. He stare, entranced as an exquisite blood-red lily was imprinted, thorns that Harry could _feel _all along its stem, and entwined in brambles. He had no time to contemplate the cruelty of coming only two syllables short from completing his incantation as a sudden stab of pain flattened him. He spat a mouthful of blood, and horror dawned on him as Riddle's knowledge diagnosed the curse.

"Would you like to know how to cure yourself?" Voldemort asked, his tone impeccably well-mannered.

"Yes," Harry rasped.

He knew there was a catch to it, but the pain was too great to bear.

The catch quickly made itself apparent as a Legilimency probe dove into his mind. If it was unpleasant with miles separating them, then it was immeasurably worse when they were less than a meter apart. Any semblance of defenses shattered upon first contact, and Voldemort held his mind helpless in a stranglehold, relentlessly forcing knowledge down the conduit between them. It was a perversion of the sublime partnership that enabled Harry and Dumbledore to fight so effectively.

Incantations he had never heard before arose to the surface of his mind, accompanied by demonic whisperings assuring him that they would cure him of the deadly affliction.

"Your mother's protection works against you now, Harry," Voldemort observed idly as his Legilimencial power receded. "I must apologize. I had refrained from casting it before, but I had held out hope that Dumbledore's folly would sway you to see reason. Evidently, I was mistaken."

The whispers grew louder, but Harry drowned them out with another hacking cough, and the puddle of blood before him expanded.

"What's the matter?" Voldemort peered down at him with concern. Harry was so dazed by the throbbing of his temples and the pain ransacking his body that it took him a moment to realize it was a mockery of compassion. "You have the knowledge of alleviating your affliction – use it! Take your pick, the spell that will mutate you, the ritual that requires the sacrifice of your best friend's family…"

Harry steadfastly shook his head.

His adamant determination turned to confusion when Voldemort tossed him his wand.

"Take it," the Dark Lord commanded, "We will duel once more, with the Dark Arts, or without."

Another blood-laden cough.

"Hasn't your penchant for ceremony ruined your plans often enough for the lesson to sink in?"

"_Crucio. _Only where you are concerned._"_

Voldemort cast the Cruciatus Curse, and in doing so did exactly what Harry hoped. He welcomed the pain. It brought his mind clarity, clearing the extraneous thoughts and emotions, despite the high cost. Harry couldn't scream as his teeth gritted together on instinct, in reaction to his pain receptors being overloaded. He bit into his tongue deeply and felt his mouth fill with the taste of copper.

_God I am __**tired **__of tasting my own blood! _he thought vehemently, forcing his thrashing to a stop as Voldemort released the torture curse.

"Fine!" he shouted hoarsely, snatching his wand and staggering to his feet.

Voldemort gestured to him magnanimously, settling into an elegant stance with his wand at his side. "We must obey custom, Harry. As the senior, courtesy dictates that I cede the opening spell to you."

"Fine," Harry repeated, fingers working around his wand in nervous anticipation.

If the Dark Lord obviously dearly wanted him to use the Dark Arts, then he would oblige.

"You should be more thorough, Tom," Harry said more evenly, a calm settling over him. "You might give your enemy more information than you are comfortable with."

Whatever spell Voldemort had expected for him to cast, it wasn't this one.

"_Morsmordre." _

It was utterly brilliant.

It could have saved Dumbledore's life had he known it earlier.

Now, it would save his own.

Cries of outrage burst from the Death Eaters as light of a green hue that could be mistaken for the Killing Curse rocketed skyward, dispersing into a serpent protruding from the mouth of a skull.

"_Explodus Extrendes Imartur!"_

The precipice the prophesied stood upon fell from beneath them as a whirling cone of magic shot into the ground between them. Geysers of rock created fissures along the crumbled precipice, separating it entirely from the rest of the mainland, and sent them plummeting to towards the rocks below.

"_Advertere Acerbis!"_

Harry cast the North Wind Curse on himself, wrapping himself in a protective cocoon of winds. He was briefly suspended in midair, but a stone the size of a troll smashed into it, bouncing off and momentarily disrupting the winds comprising his makeshift barrier. He slid down several feet before he regained control over it.

Voldemort transformed into his Animagus form, beating aside loosened boulders with wings, and with full-length flaps, hauled himself back onto stable ground.

The Dark Mark had arisen, and the creature turned its ram-horned head to gaze upon it, dumbfounded.

Moments from being swept over by the tide, Harry did the same.

The irony delighted him.

* * *

"Madam Bones!" the female Auror called, robes trailing behind her as she careened into the office of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's Chair. "Dark… Mark!" she gasped out.

To her credit, she did not trip, but launched into her report.

Amelia Bones arched an eyebrow as the coherency of the rest of her words was lost. The words that she understood weren't so disturbing, which perplexed her. Dark Mark sightings were hardly uncommon now. Death Eater initiates underwent a rite of passage in murdering families of half-bloods. They were happening with increasing regularity, which disturbed the panel of analysts to no end. According to the trends, the Death Eaters' rate of recruitment was steadily rising, already greater than the rate at which Auror trainees left the Academy and entered active service by a large margin. The Auror units would be responding to the raids nonstop, were it not for the rotary system.

"Cease your babbling at once, Nymphadora," she commanded her subordinate sternly.

The young woman didn't dare object to the director's usage of her detested first name, and took a moment to compose herself, hair calming from a violent red to its customary pink color.

"There's been a Dark Mark sighting over the Dover coast," Tonks reported dutifully, "According to the analysts; it is Class Themis on the Casadesus Spectrum."

Amelia froze, and set her quill down, careful to prevent any ink from falling on her report.

"Invoke the Bagnold Edict and requisition a team of Curse-Breakers from Gringotts," she ordered briskly, "Take your advance squadron with them to the area. Recall Kingsley's and Sylfaen's assault teams, and redirect Dawlish's and Kassein to complete their assignments."

A smile of amusement flitted briefly over her features as Tonks tripped over the rug in her eagerness to carry out her orders.

* * *

"Aurors, three full squadrons! They've got a team of Curse-breakers!"

Voldemort's gaze snapped earthward from the Dark Mark dominating the sky to the assemblage of Aurors at the top of the hill, where the Anti-Apparition Wards had kept them from appearing any closer and surprising his forces. Anti-Approach Wards kept them from approaching on foot, but both wards were in danger of falling. A group of wizards and witches dressed in the ornate regalia of Gringotts raised a clamor as they assaulted the wards, spells sapping their integrity.

"Lower the wards in ten seconds," he commanded. "All of you, be prepared to Disapparate when they do. None will come for you if your incompetence is such."

"Milord, we greatly outnumber them…"

The outspoken senior Death Eater fell silent at his cold look.

"Let the Inferi entertain them."

* * *

The waves crashed against the cliff-face, their elegant forms splashing harmlessly against the boundary imposed by land. Harry watched them mount their charges endlessly, lost in thought.

He ignored the ache of his wrists, wearied from hours of supporting him as he dangled from an outcropping that he had caught.

Somewhere underneath the waves of that arm of the Atlantic, the greatest headmaster Hogwarts had ever known slept in his submerged grave. It was a fact that Harry had brooded over in silence, ignoring all pains that afflicted him. The gashes, the blood-lily, nothing could dislodge him from his apathy. The worries that plagued Britain, that plagued Harry, were no longer Dumbledore's. The war with Voldemort no longer his to fight.

And his responsibilities… did their immense weight fall onto his protégé's shoulders?

He shut his eyes tightly, finally acknowledging his exhaustion with a saddened sigh.

He let the moment pass; deriving what joy he could from the gentle breeze.

He mourned the tattered remains of his half of the Dual-Core connection. He would never forget the tantalizing power that he had commanded with the slightest application of will.

Briefly, he wondered what plans fermented in Voldemort's mind for the rest of Europe. Surely a Dark Lord of his stature had ambitions that encompassed more than Great Britain?

Reopening his eyes, he looked over the horizon and watched admiringly as the first rays of daylight lent the water a cheerful sparkle.

His gaze drifted higher, into the clouds.

He saw eagles soar.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: **It is I again! Thanks to all for the response from the last chapter. You've been unbelievable. Now, the story takes off. This chapter is 6,000 words, not as long as the monolithic previous chapter, but I trust you guys won't hold that against me.

**IMPORTANT: **Credit goes to **Moniteur **for masterminding of one of Altair's scenes. I wrote a battle of swords - he wrote a battle of swordplay. He infused tactics, and I dramatized it.

T'is showtime.

* * *

_**Chapter Six: **_Medieval Hitman

* * *

_The chill, so dominant during the night hours prodded and searched for a crack to seep into, but the heat of the argument waged within the bastion's conference room gave no purchase._

_"How did your men lose him?"_

_The demand carried a great deal of anger, but none seated around the dining table were deceived. Anger in subjects such as these were borne of fear, an emotion foreign to the assemblage of hooded councilors._

_"How could someone cause so much disruption to our cause?"_

_Disbelief laced the next speaker's words, deepening the insecurity in the rest of the congregation. The Knights Templar had enormous funds and manpower. With its backing, among other organizations, the hosts of Christendom had been able to invade the Holy Land._

_"We have tried to stop him, but many lives have been claimed by his steel." another snarled, pounding his fist on the dining table. _

_"He fights like no man."_

_

* * *

_Harry's breath hitched harshly in his throat as he folded himself at the waist, instinctively placing his weight on his heels as the sword whistled past him. 

The sun's oppressive heat enfolded his form, but the light was shaded from his eyes by a cowl. in contrast, the face of his attacker's was bared to the world. The man's face, Arabian of appearance, was flushed with frustration.

The Arabian readied for another swing of his shamshir. In alarm, Harry prepared to deliver a blow to put him down, but realized he had nothing. No knife, no sword – but his fist began to clench of its own accord regardless.

He heard the faint thrum of gears winding.

His weight rolled back forward as he slammed a gauntleted fist into the man's stomach, sending the sword whirling through the air and over the brink of the rooftop. His hidden blade sprouted from its nest in the gauntlet. It extended between his middle finger and thumb through the space left by his amputated ring finger, shearing through the cloth and into flesh.

His other hand pulled out a scrap of fabric from within his raiment. He turned away uncaringly as the slain guard toppled over, cleaning the blood from his hidden blade before stowing it away. His attention was fixed on his left hand, and he puzzled over it. It was disconcerting to realize he was missing a ring finger, and having said dagger spear a man in the chest. It was mounted in his gauntlet, probably spring-loaded.

The hand was foreign to him, rough and nimble, even encased in a gauntlet. The rest of himself was foreign to him too – his eyes did not see the world through spectacles, and he stood tall. Harry felt a vague sense of embarrassment at the juxtaposition of the foreigner's physique to the one he currently occupied and his own, physically frail body.

He walked to the edge of the rooftop, absent-mindedly retracting the hidden blade, and stared at the towering towers around him in consternation. All were the light color of sandstone. His gaze lowered coolly to the bustling expanse of streets laid out below. Too far below him for his comfort. He surveyed the stalls, the fountains dotting market squares and intersections, and the medieval architecture. The buildings were very traversable, planks laid out across rooftops, wide window sills.

_Overall, not something to be found in the twentieth century.

* * *

_  
Kingsley Shacklebolt carefully lifted his boot, and Scourgified the soles of the rotted flesh he had trodden on. Casually, he set his foot back down, and flashed a winning smile at Sylfaen. The other Auror Commander nodded curtly, and returned to directing his subordinates in levitating the Inferi – inanimate - corpses into mounds.

The Aurors had made relatively quick work of the Inferi. It had been close, though. The Inferi's numbers had been halved twice over, but had almost scaled the hillside enough to draw the Aurors into a melee. Several were wounded and were escorted to safety, but most of the up-front linesmen had gotten splattered in gore.

He strolled idly to Tonks, falling into step beside her.

"We're nearly done here," he said. "You can go-"

"-I'll make the report to Dumbledore," Tonks interrupted immediately. "You deal with writing the report."

"What! I've written the bloody paperwork for the last five – no, six- times in a row!" Kingsley protested. "It's your turn!"

Tonks shrugged indifferently. "Why not do it again, senior Auror?" she suggested earnestly. "Seven is, after all, the magic number."

Kingsley staggered in horror from the coup de grace.

"Damn it Tonks!" Kingsley swore. "You do this every single time!" It was a token effort, the results were predetermined, but he couldn't let her steamroll him completely.

"I could write it up, but the results won't be pretty," she said solemnly. "You know this."

He had the great misfortune of being on the same branch as Tonks on the chain of command, and so was usually deployed with her when the situation called for more Aurors than a single squad could handle. Every assignment led to the same quarrel: who would tackle the paperwork, and who would go summarize the events to Dumbledore. They, including Sylfaen, were of the same rank, but he was only newly promoted and Tonks, with her superior bullying tactics, prevailed more often than not.

"I know," he said resignedly. "I'd rather I didn't, but I know."

The last time he had cajoled Tonks into taking the paperwork had been a disaster. She had given up arguing – too easily, he thought – and he had been preparing to leave his office when she had burst in, babbling about how she had misplaced the report. He had gotten no sleep that night. Afterwards, he debated whether it was intentional or a genuine accident. The other Order member was wily and clumsy enough for either to be possible and frankly, it disgusted him. Either way, he wasn't going to put his fortune to the test. Not wanting it to backfire and end up toiling through the night, he conceded defeat gracefully.

They looked to where the Dark Mark had hung like an ill omen.

"Why would they put up the mark here, of all places?" Kingsley wondered.

"Maybe You-Know-Who wants to remind Europe of the level of power he has here, and that the other nations will be next," Tonks suggested. "Dark Lords like symbolism like that."

Kingsley disagreed. "It might have been a side effect, that it wasn't You-Know-Who's original intention. I reviewed the beginning of the fight in the portable Pensieve. The Inferi present upon arrival mismatched the number of graves here," he said, gesturing at the graveyard behind them. "And why would You-Know-Who show us how many Death Eaters he has? His numbers don't totally eclipse ours, so he isn't going for the intimidation factor."

"He might have been trying to deceive us. You know, make us think he has a manageable number while he has loads we haven't seen," Tonks speculated.

"If he has that many Death Eaters, then we're done for one way or the other," Kingsley pointed out, before realizing what he had just said. "But it's best not to think of such things," he added hastily.

Kingsley resolved to leave that out of his report. Hope was a delicate thing – scattershot speculation among the rank and file wouldn't do much harm, but hearing such a thing from a figure of authority would.

"Perhaps you should. You are writing that report, aren't you?" Tonks asked sweetly.

Kingsley looked at her incredulously, as if saying _Don't gloat _too _much._

They reached the precipice of the cliff and her face suddenly morphed into a mask of seriousness. She seized him by the arm and directed him so that his back faced the graveyard.

"Harry's down there," she said bluntly.

Kingsley, who was about to wrench his arm free from her grip, did a double take. "Harry, as in our Harry?" he asked, doubt lacing his words.

She gave a huff of exasperation and gestured. Kingsley carefully peered over the crag, dismay suddenly overtaking him.

He spied the figure suspended unmoving from an outcropping, and suddenly felt light-headed.

_Merlin! The Death Eaters only leave the Mark when their target is dead!_

He nervously rolled his sleeves, and raised his wand.

_"Wingar_-"

"No!" Tonks hissed, seizing his wand arm and forcefully lowering it to his side. "We can't draw undue attention to him. Imagine the ruckus the Ministry would raise!"

"Now is _not_ the time. His life is at risk," Kingsley hissed in response, shaking himself free of her grasp. "Dumbledore will take care of the politics."

Or Harry's life wasn't at risk – in which case recovering Harry's dead body was infinitely worse. If the unthinkable had happened, then Britain would reel, and the Darkness would prosper.

She renewed her hold determinedly. "Kingsley, listen. He's been hanging there for hours – he's not about to fall now. He must have a Sticking Charm on him. And you know Dumbledore – we sent him the notification to him, and he was in his office last night when I reported to him! And yet, he's not here. I don't like this, not at all. No one else in the Order has political clout. He'll be open season if we take him to the Ministry."

Kingsley thought this over, and reluctantly agreed.

They stood there in silence for a while, and Kingsley snapped his fingers. He quickly knelt, and removed his boot.

"Time to exercise some 'presidential authority'. _Portus_," he tapped his boot with the tip of his wand. It glowed blue briefly, confirming its conversion into a Portkey.

"Damn, I should have thought of that," Tonks muttered.

_"Wingardium Leviosa." _Kingsley lifted the boot, and with gentle motions, coaxed it down to the boy suspended below.

He quashed a twinge of regret as it began its descent. That boot had gone through much with him, stepping on the faces of Dark Wizards he had fought and defeated and the rotted flesh of the Inferi he had put down recently.

The boot smacked Harry across the back of his head, and the Portkey and the boy disappeared with a flash.

He took a deep breath.

It was time to cover his tracks.

"Oh no," he rumbled loudly, drawing the attention of the other Aurors to him. "My boot has fallen over the edge of the cliff. Woe is me."

Kingsley's shoulders sagged in relief, even as Tonks burst out into guffaws.

* * *

_"People say he moves like an angel of death, carrying fury on his wings!"_

_"Nonsense, these are just stories. Such myths do not exist," another Templar sneered._

_"This man is costing us a fortune to contain!"_

_"We have to stop him, or everything we've worked for will be destroyed!"_

_They strained to remember. To remember what is was like to be at an impasse, where the might of the city's garrisons and of their coffers counted for nothing. Their armies had triumphed in the field, but now a single man slipped through their fingers within their own territory._

_This fearful talk was filler. They were waiting until someone said something definitive.

* * *

_The sun had fallen, and nightfall descended upon the Kingdom.

Harry sank low, the trails of his tabard flaying about and raising dust from the cobblestones of the courtyard. The maneuver dizzied him, but he reached over his back, and grasping a smooth object between his index and middle finger, rose. He flung a throwing knife, catching an archer taking position at the stairwell in the stomach.

A clang sent a tremor up his arm, and he realized that this time, he was holding a sword. He shoved back, disengaging his attacker's sword from his own. He stilled, assessing his opposition.

_Two. _

_There were two of them._

The two swordsman separated opening the distance between themselves, forcing Harry to be a central pivot point for both of them, as they moved in concert to put one of themselves at his back. Their heads were unprotected by helmets, but the rest of their bodies were clad in armor. A heavy uniform clothed them, white fabric with a red cross stitched across their fronts. Harry moved quickly, running several steps forward and to the left in order to escape the flanking maneuver, and to put his foes into co-linearity. He knew this wouldn't last long. The first swordsman made the opening lunge, making to run him through the upper chest with his saber. Harry stepped obliquely forward and to the left while counter thrusting low so that the attack sliced through the air, and not his flesh. Harry retreated back and to the left again immediately, giving his blade a sharp twist and tug as he moved.

For a moment, the attacker's blade quivered with the speed of the thrust, before the soldier dropped to the ground due to the massive loss of blood pressure caused by the puncture and subsequent ripping of the femoral artery. The second swordsman moved into range while carefully maintaining a defensive stance. Harry moved too quickly though and the tip of his sword slid home at a very shallow angle between the bones of his enemy's forearm.

Using the leverage gained by the position of his blade, and the persuasive power of pain, he forced the man onto his knees.

Harry mentally felt that his throat dry at the brutal, visceral combat, and felt a growing concern. What was this? It was surreal, much like his visitations into Voldemort's mind, when he had experienced what Voldemort had experienced. This, though, was unlike anything he had come to associate with the Dark Lord. Surely such a delusional person such as Tom Riddle would not sully himself by wielding a sword, the weapon of the Muggles he so hated?

Maybe another power was at work – a power awakened by the snapping of the Dual-Core link?

He was the foreigner.

Harry thrust his sword out sideways as he spun, simultaneously deploying his hidden dagger and slugging his fist at the downed swordsman, who shrunk away from the killing blow, but to no avail.

_There was one._

The kneeling man screeched as the dagger sheared through the links of his mail shirt and a lung, and then fell backward, blood running in rivulets from both the wound and his mouth.

Both men were now sprawled their backs, one mercifully slain relatively cleanly and the other struggling feebly to rise. The latter, the soldier acquainted with his hidden dagger, gasped violently, and Harry's cold, eagle eyes met his as the flow of blood mangled the shape of the red cross of his reddening uniform.

_And then there were none to stand between his target and his dagger.

* * *

_  
The heavy oaken door swung open, raising a cloud of dust as the three Auror commanders stepped through the doorway and onto the bridge that lay on the other side. Charles Sylfaen looked around with unabashed interest as he shuffled after Tonks and Kingsley who, after plenty of visits, were accustomed to the surroundings. They were still cautious though - the mystique of the Unspeakables' abode never entirely wore off on outsiders to the Department of Mysteries.

Sylfaen craned his neck upwards, an expression of open wonder flitting across his face. It was common knowledge among Ministry personnel that the cluster of rooms centered around the Hall of Prophecy was not the main complex. Main complexes were not wholly empty of people.

"The Unspeakables have style, I'll give them that much."

Dozens of bridges much like the one they treaded upon now crisscrossed all around them at different elevations, a dim well of light shimmering hundreds of meters above. The darkness was otherwise complete, save for the twin braziers halfway across each bridge, tiny pinpricks of flame that illuminated no more than fifteen feet around them.

Kingsley motioned for the others to stop as they reached an ovular platform. They climbed the steps, and found themselves facing a desk indistinguishable from the reception desks found elsewhere in the Ministry. A container full of quills, a stand of manila folders, and even a blank picture rested upon the polished wooden surface, but the cozy-looking chair behind the desk was unoccupied. The sheer… ordinariness of it seemed out of place in the otherwise mysterious headquarters of the Department of Mysteries.

The Aurors waited in silence for their consultant, shifting from one foot to the other.

Time wore on, and Sylfaen broke the silence as he stared hard into the darkness.

"I wonder how large this place is?" he mused.

"I wouldn't know," Kingsley shrugged.

"Well, the geometry of the neighboring Departments can't leave more than half a kilometer or so," Sylfaen mused, fingering his wand. "Unless size-expansion magics can be used on this scale?"

Tonks eyed her colleague warily. "I wouldn't-"

"_Incendio."_

Tonks trailed off, resigned as Sylfaen sent a bright flare rocketing out into the blackness. It illuminated the heavy air as it lazily passed, shrinking to the size of a firefly, before sputtering out completely.

It did not reach the walls of the cavern.

"Aurors and their blasted curiosity," someone harrumphed.

The trio turned sharply to the desk as a wizard, dressed plainly in black robes, hobbled over to the desk, a stack of parchment tucked under his arm.

"But I am glad to see you survived your forage into battle unscathed nonetheless," the wizard finished pleasantly, sitting down and folding his hands together.

Framed by flames from the brazier on either side of his desk, the Unspeakable looked every bit a secretary of Hell.

He beckoned them closer, and they reluctantly drew in.

The three Aurors stood there in an uncomfortable silence, watching as the Unspeakable rifled through his papers. The man looked up at them, and his eyebrows shot up to his hairline with realization.

"Pardon my lack of hospitality," he apologized, conjuring three armchairs with a quick swish of his wand, which the Aurors gratefully took.

Unspeakables oversaw their protocols strictly and expected outsiders to follow them even if they did not know them. This left other ministerial staff with no choice but to be passive for fear of breaking some unwritten rule. The executive branch in particular complained that the Department of Mysteries enjoyed too much autonomy, but for now it held support. To the other departments, it was untamable and as long as it remained as such, no Minister controlled the Ministry entirely.

"It's been a long day, you know, what with the most powerful Dark Mark ever cast in history. _Sooooooooooo_…" he drawled, "the purpose of this appointment is to supply you with enough information to compile your report. Whoever is chosen to submit it matters not to me, but the unfortunate one selected can at least have the others' insight."

Kingsley sighed, and Tonks stretched her arms languidly as she leaned back in her chair, smiling smugly.

"This," the Unspeakable tapped a marbled stone on his desk. It brightened, producing an eerie white light and a translucent, watery image in the air above. "is the graph that you were shown, Tonks, documenting the magical growth of the suspected creator of tonight's Mark."

The Unspeakable was a liaison between their departments. From what little the Aurors understood, the Unspeakables had developed an instrument that detected occurrences of Curse Marks, like those produced by Morsmordre. Whereas other spells tended to dissipate quickly, they were the only pieces of magic that were permanent unless undone. Another instrument measured the power imbued in it, essentially revealing the power of the Mark's creator. Unlike other spells, one could not underpower or overpower a Curse Mark.

Typical procedure had the Unspeakables alerting the Aurors as to the Mark's appearance. Upon arrival, the Aurors dismantled anything left behind by the Death Eaters, and removed the Dark Mark from the sky. The Unspeakables directly managed the notification of the Aurors whenever the Dark Mark appeared. It was by their grace that parties were sent. The policy came under attack repeatedly in the Wizengamot, but was necessary for efficiency. The Unspeakables filtered the Markings so that Aurors would not be sent on false alarms.

To discover the identity of the culprit, the Unspeakables compared the power measured in the Dark Mark to the records of suspected Death Eaters. These records documented the magical growth of Death Eaters via their wands. All Ministry-sanctioned wands issued to wizarding children at the age of eleven contained a special fiber, which sent readings of the concentration of magic being conducted by the wand back to devices in the Department of Mysteries. It was nearly impossible to remove, and had unrivalled accuracy since it measured the amount of power placed into each spell before they had a chance to dissipate and throw off readings.

One such record hung the air in front of them now.

Kingsley inspected the graph. The x-axis depicted the age of the wizard and the y-axis the concentration of magic. The line had a steep slope. It spiked once the wizard had turned sixteen – the age at which magical maturation was undergone – and continued to rise at a fixed rate, before it abruptly terminated shortly after age twenty two. Fiery letters arranged the name Tom Marvolo Riddle.

"The person's quite strong," Tonks observed, "but what happened when this, Tom, turned twenty-ish? Did he die?"

"No, Ms. Tonks," the Unspeakable shook his head, face stony, "But please, do try again."

Kingsley's eyes widened at the implication. "Wait, the graph can't have terminated before the wizard's death unless the recording fiber was removed."

"Very good," the Unspeakable said, nodding approvingly. "Tom Marvolo Riddle indeed did so. He removed it the instant he left Borgin and Burke's.employ, after which he became untraceable. All evidence points to him knowing its existence, but biding his time until the Aurors could not come down upon him before he excised it from his wand. Not even we have discovered the process."

"Then… how does this relate to the Dark Mark?" Sylfaen questioned, eyes fixed on the graph.

"None of the Death Eaters' records corresponded to the reading of the night's Dark Mark, so I believe that the creator was their leader. The strongest among them. The chief."

"You-Know-Who? He was seen when we arrived, so that would make sense," Tonks offered.

Sylfaen furrowed his brow, realizing dawning. "Wait, this Riddle fellow's You-Know-Who?"

The small audience watched, entranced, as the letters composing the Dark Lord's name rearranged themselves into I am Lord Voldemort.

"Commit it his name to memory."

The Unspeakable's eyes glittered, but any emotion was distorted through the filmy image of the graph.

The moment passed.

"A clever trick, isn't it? He ended our documentation of his magical growth, and so we have no concrete evidence that You-Know-Who conjured this Dark Mark. However, if you extrapolate from where the graph left off…"

The Unspeakable leaned over the table, wand tracing a line that continued from age twenty-two. It had the same slope as the original line since the magical core of a wizard developed at a constant pace following maturation, but sparkled blue to distinguish it as an extrapolation. It rose and climbed higher before finally stopping at age seventy-five for the x-axis. The value for the y-axis was dazzling, lingering where only the likes of Albus Dumbledore, Gellert Grindelwald, and evidently Lord Voldemort, could reach.

Right in the upper reaches of magical power known as Classification Themis.

* * *

_It was still night. _

"How do you propose we restrain this... angel of yours?" the council member at the end of the table snorted disdainfully.

He rolled his wrist, swirling the wine around his silver chalice, unmindful of the reflection that appeared briefly on its varnished surface. It was gone in an instant, and he thought he heard the echo of a footstep in the pillars that surrounded the dining table.

"Raise an army? For one man?" he pressed.

The volume rose as everyone began taking, leading to few actually being heard.

"- a disaster!-"

"My soldiers cannot be everywhere –"

Now it was just squabbling, and the Templar lowered his chalice.

"So! He seeks to stop us. To claim our treasure for himself. Pure madness. Let him try!"

He stood up, and everyone recognized the prompt, drawing themselves to their full height and drawing longswords and setting their tips into the table's surface.

"Every angel can fall."

The Templar looked at the man at the opposite end of the table, narrowing his eyes.

"Why do you not join us, brother? Is there something…wrong?" he suggested.

Slowly, the only seated Templar moved an arm to his hip, and began to rise, clutching his hip all the while.

The others of the brotherhood watched him try to stand in silence, a silence that was broken by the tolling of a bell, and the man collapsed onto the table to reveal the dagger sunk to the hilt in his back.

Shock reigned, and the Templars turned outwards from the table, searching the surrounding shadows frantically for the danger that made its presence known.

An eagle cried, the harsh screech following on the heels of the bell's toll.

The Templars slowly began lowering their weapons – but not easing their vigilance - as a feather dipped in blood drifted down to the table to lie beside the prone form of their assassinated brother.

* * *

  
Harry's eyes fluttered open. 

At his waking moment he feared that he was stalking the halls of a citadel, or scaling the walls of the inner fortress of a city, but he was lying down. To his relief, he was not occupying the foreigner's body, but his own. He lay there, holding his breath. So, he wasn't stuck to the cliff-face, he didn't think he was a prisoner. Had the Ministry found him?

His hand groped blindly across the surface of the nightstand, before finding his glasses.

He put them on and wrinkled his nose in distaste when he realized that he had been tucked in. An action only ever undertaken by one person - Molly Weasley.

His hand returned to the nightstand, still groping blindly despite his glasses. Feeling the familiar texture of his wand, he wrapped his fingers around it and whispered, _"Lumos."_

A smile flickered across his face as the battered walls of his Grimmauld Place guestroom were illuminated. To his relief, he no longer wore his baggy clothes which had been worn down to the saddest of rags, which he had been wearing in his flight from Privet Drive. Even with the low standards he had been accustomed to living with the Dursleys, he sincerely hoped they had been incinerated with extreme prejudice.

Flinging aside the sheets, he crawled out of bed, but that was as far as he got. His body felt worn, and a dull throb persisted in his temples. He squeezed his eyelids shut and sank to the floor.

He stayed that way for a while, watching the shadows dance along the walls. As he waited for his headache to recede, his thoughts turned to the subject of his spell repertoire. It had been expanded with the influx of Riddle's knowledge, but according to his and Dumbledore's theory, Voldemort had implanted his knowledge to make him dependent on the Dark Arts, if he relied on it too much.

During the ride in the Knight Bus, Dumbledore had spoken of a solution to the problem. He was dead now, and the solution might be lost with him – unless the Order knew it.

It's willingness to impart their knowledge was interconnected with the reason why he needed it, and that… was complicated.

It meant he couldn't rely on Riddle's dark lore, if they were to remain a temptation.

Harry absently gave his wrist an experimental roll, and blinked in confusion as his hand began to transition into a complex series of maneuvers of its own accord. The movements were reminiscent of one of the techniques the Foreigner had performed the night prior with his sword. He held his breath, acting purely on instinct, but lost control, sending his wand spinning away. Feeling self-conscious, he scrambled to his feet and snatched it off the floor, the pounding in his temples subsiding.

He stared at his hand thoughtfully, wiggling his fingers. The first leap in logic would have him believe that he had inherited some of the Foreigner's skills, but that wasn't accurate. There was no muscle memory, and if there were, it would have been suspiciously too easy.

Striding to the wardrobe, he quickly stripped from the pajamas he wore and dressed modestly in a pair of trousers and a long-sleeved shirt from their hangars.

Tentatively, he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. He peered over the banister, and saw light trickle from the space between the bottom of the kitchen door and the floor.

Feeling daring, he flung himself over the banister. His legs moved to brace him for his landing, and he gave a grunt as he landed.

"I could go for this," he remarked.

To his chagrin, he noticed his knees were trembling under the force of the impact. Even if he had awaken from his nightly vision with something of use, it appeared that he needed to be physically fit in order to capitalize on it.

_No free lunch, _Riddle's cold voice whispered in his ear.

Mind awhirl with thoughts, he sidled to the kitchen door. The floorboards of the Grimmauld Place were weary with age and creaked at the best of times, but were soundless as he walked lightly over them.

Words drifted into the hall when the door slid open, the volume dying down a little as he stepped inside. Silence fell altogether as he cleared his throat, alerting the wizards and witches seated around the dining table of his entrance.

He recognized Nymphadora Tonks, Dedalus Diggle, Mundungus Fletcher, Minerva McGonagall, Elphias Doge, Severus Snape, and others, all of them wearing the same, curious expression.

He puzzled over this, wondering about the purpose of their existence as the Order. There barely numbered over twenty, few enough to be completely overwhelmed by a swarm of Death Eaters, regardless of their skill. Only a handful of them were combative, and the others were Molly Weasleys, people that didn't belong on the battlefield. They had been effective in dealing with the small band of followers Voldemort had brought to the Department of Mysteries, but when facing an army, how much of a difference could they feasibly make?

They could have a lasting impact on the war if they were dedicated to the last breath, but they… weren't. Here they were, gathered over a meal, and discussing some issues that had arisen. Were they secretly happy that all they had to do was trade words, and they could claim they had done their part in the war?

He inhaled deeply, pushing the thoughts away from the forefront of his mind.

"Order meeting?" he asked, eyes roaming down the table, noting that his voice was still rough.

"Is it not obvious to you, Potter?" someone spat.

The answerer was Snape.

_Naturally. _

"Yes," Harry said, meeting the Potions Professor's sneer with an equally vicious expression. "Ever heard of a rhetorical question?"

"Then you already know that your presence is not required, nor is it welcome. Go back to your bedroom. I'm certain that you are in need of more rest," Snape said dismissively. "We will send for you when our affairs are settled."

Harry inwardly snarled at the man's casual disregard for him. He balled his fists, but otherwise made no sign indicative of his irritation.

Shame crept into him, shame that all the Order of the Phoenix's members could be fit into this kitchen when the number of Death Eaters Voldemort commanded would stretch the house far past its capacity.

How could they a difference, a meaningful one, when they were so… sedentary?

He exhaled – how was this going to work? He somehow needed to extract Dumbledore's solution from them. It seemed easy enough. He'd ask if they knew a method of preventing the corruptive influence of the Dark Arts from affecting him, but they'd expect information in return.

They needed to know Dumbledore was no longer alive and able to command them, and for that they would need to know the sequence of events.

He searched their guarded expressions, mentally attaching a name to each face he knew. Most were survivors of the First Order of the Phoenix, which meant they had suffered the loss, whether it be the loss of a limb or the loss of a loved one.

He paled slightly in the dim lighting, but the drainage of the color from his cheeks went unnoticed.

The sequence of events involved him assimilating shards of Voldemort's extensive knowledge of the Dark Arts, and pieces of his personality.

In plain English, the knowledge of Curses that had blinded, maimed, and slain their friends and family rested at his fingertips, and he had assimilated the traits of the monster they despised with every ounce of hatred their naïve hearts could offer.

Divulging the truth was tantamount to painting a bright, red bull's-eye over himself.

The Dark Lord had tainted him, and for all his desire to cleanse himself, he could not ask the Order to place instinctive fear and hatred over reason.

It was too much to ask of anyone.

His options weighed, he bowed his head in surrender.

Snape smirked in triumph as Harry turned away and pushed open the kitchen door.

Hesitant, the Order began to resume its debate, but Harry interrupted them once more.

"Where oh where might Dumbledore be?" he sang innocently.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Updated the day after Chopin's birthday. I wouldn't have it any other way. 

I'm focusing on broadening and developing the plot, which is very much in order given the frenetic action of the previous chapters. I'm aware that some things appear questionable - the Unspeakable's divulging of Voldemort's name, for one. Nothing is sacred. For things that appear to be plot holes, like the first Dark Mark for instance - read in between the lines! I'm not that subtle. :P

Andro


	7. Notice

**Notice

* * *

**

Basically, I hated the game.

Ironic, but not altogether unexpected. I know I know, I set myself up for failure and the loss of fifty dollars when I fell for the hype machine. I saw a medieval tale with a brilliant but vague implication of science fiction elements, and impulsively wrote a fanfic thinking there was no way Ubisoft could fuck such a golden premise up - and they gave their framing device away like a triple-cunted hooker. All that mystery reduced to a paint-by-numbers assassinate x-number of historical figures formula. Even _that_ is buried under the repetitive monotony of the side-quests.

I don't think there's much that's workable. If you're going to write a Templar conspiracy, which is the overarching plot, there's no need to subordinate yourself to an unambitious video game.

So I'm proposing this:

I still have the creative spark for a cloak and daggers tale, just not one involving Assassin's Creed. I'm removing the crossover aspects completely and streamlining the bloated action sequences. I already have my pitch, and am working on overhauling the nonexistent plot. I'll reduce the excesses, like the faceless Death Eaters getting mowed down by the dozen, which was roundly criticized on DLP by even people that liked the story. The next time I update, everything will be replaced with the story significantly further along. I understand the basic tenets of storytelling now, especially the mystifying term "falling action", so it should be more bearable this time around. If there's no interest whatsoever, I'll work on my other projects.

We cool?

If you disagree with my views on the franchise, there's a proper Assassin's Creed crossover entitled The Creed of Slytherin by dangerzone2. Whether you'll like it or not will be strongly influenced by whether you like the first sentence:

"The skies over Privet Drive were filled with thunder and lightning: forks of white energy were striking the ground with such force that miniature fires were being sparked up, only to be extinguished by the torrential rain and blown away with the hurricane force winds before the titans of thunder rumbled in anger, annoyed that the earth below was once again escaping the wrath of the storm."


End file.
